Michel Foucault Quotes

There are more ideas on earth than intellectuals imagine. And these ideas are more active, stronger, more resistant, more passionate than "politicians" think. We have to be there at the birth of ideas, the bursting outward of their force: not in books expressing them, but in events manifesting this force, in struggles carried on around ideas, for or against them. Ideas do not rule the world. But it is because the world has ideas (and because it constantly produces them) that it is not passively ruled by those who are its leaders or those who would like to teach it, once and for all, what it must think.

Changes and progress very rarely are gifts from above. They come out of struggles from below.

Revolutions are the periods of history when individuals count most.

We are all going to have to see pain if we are going to bring about change.

Blood has always flowed before great ideas could settle into actual institutions, or before the yearnings of humanity could become realities.

… there must be free play for so-called subversive ideas - every idea subverts the old to make way for the new. To shut off subversion is to shut off peaceful progress and to invite revolution and war.

We are revolutionists from head to foot; revolutionists we were; revolutionists we are; revolutionists we shall remain until the very end.

Politics lives in people, ideas live in people, they live in the concrete struggles that people have.

Rebels and non-conformists are often the pioneers and designers of change.

This book [March], in my estimation, is a road map. It is a change agent. It is saying to people, "This is a way".

Every revolution begins as consciousness because some group of people has to imagine change. You have to have the idea of change or at least have a hope before you can proceed. And that stage goes very quickly because a contagion of consciousness is within your control. But when you get to the stage of institutional change, it becomes a much slower process.

The agricultural co-operative movement has been a severe ideological and political struggle from the very beginning. No cooperative can be established without going through such a struggle. Before a brand-new social system can be built on the site of the old, the site must be swept clean. Invariably, remnants of old ideas reflecting the old system remain in people's minds for a long time, and they do not easily give way. After a co-operative is established, it must go through many more struggles before it can be consolidated. Even then, the moment it relaxes its efforts it may collapse.

You have to make change.

Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle.

The revolution starts now.

The job is never done and every generation has to fight again.

Let the revolution begin.

Progress of any kind is always at variance with the old and established ideas and therefore with the codes inspired by them. Every step of progress is a change involving heavy risks.

Only pissed-off people change the world.

A world in everlasting conflict between the new idea and the old allegiances, new arts and new inventions against the old establishment.

The struggle between the two worlds [Fascism and Democracy] can permit no compromises. The new cycle which begins with the ninth year of the Fascist regime places the alternative in even greater relief either we or they, either their ideas or ours, either our State or theirs!

You can be active with the activists or sleep in with the sleepers while you're waiting for the Great Leap Forwards.

Women must become revolutionary. This cannot be evolution but revolution.

To make an idea become a reality is a process that fascinates me; otherwise it stays just an idea.

Revolution is our obligation: our hope of evolution.