Michel Foucault Quotes

Relations of power "are indissociable from a discourse of truth, and they can neither be established nor function unless a true discourse is produced, accumulated, put into circulation, and set to work. Power cannot be exercised unless a certain economy of discourses of truth functions in, on the basis of, and thanks to, that power."

...it's my hypothesis that the individual is not a pre-given entity which is seized on by the exercise of power. The individual, with his identity and characteristics, is the product of a relation of power exercised over bodies, multiplicities, movements, desires, forces.

But let there be no misunderstanding: it is not that a real man, the object of knowledge, philosophical reflection or technological intervention, has been substituted for the soul, the illusion of theologians. The man described for us, whom we are invited to free, is already in himself the effect of a subjection more profound than himself. A 'soul' inhabits him and brings him to existence, which is itself a factor in the mastery that power exercises over the body. The soul is the effect and instrument of a political anatomy; the soul is the prison of the body.

Domination is not that solid and global kind of domination that one person exercises over others, or one group over another, but the manifold forms of domination that can be exercised within society.

All forms of power - even based on the consensus of the democratic system - react when they are being attacked, or when those who exercise power become a target.

Real politics are the possession and distribution of power.

Foucault's genius is to go down to the little dramas, dress them in facts hardly anyone else has noticed, and turn these stage settings into clues to a hitherto un-thought series of confrontations out of which, he contends, the orderly structure of society is composed.

Anarchists try to identify power structures. They urge those exercising power to justify themselves. This justification does not succeed most of the time.

My interest is in power. How power works.

Exercise power by means of kindness, and you may be causing more damage than you could by cruelty. Neither approach is correct.

Once we recognize the power of propaganda, we need to ask whether its exercise is consistent with those democratic ideals to which lip-service is commonly accorded.

Everything that we call Invention or Discovery in the higher sense of the word is the serious exercise and activity of an original feeling for truth, which, after a long course of silent cultivation, suddenly flashes out into fruitful knowledge.

The power to do things for people is also the power to do things to people.

Resistances do not derive from a few heterogeneous principles; but neither are they a lure or a promise that is of necessity betrayed. They are the odd term in relations of power; they are inscribed in the latter as an irreducible opposite.

Philip is being very vocal about it. For me, I don't think the story isn't at all anti-religious in any way. I think what's it more against is the control and the misuse of power that any organised religion, or any political organisation exercises over the people they're supposed to represent. I think that, for me, is what's important in the movie.

You get the same order of criminality from any State to which you give power to exercise it; and whatever power you give the State to do things for you carries with it the equivalent power to do things to you.

Power is fortified not just by what it destroys, but also by what it creates. Not just by what it takes, but also by what it gives. And powerlessness reaffirmed not just by the helplessness of those who have lost, but also by the gratitude of those who have (or think they have) gained.

Ideology is a certain unique experience of the universe and your place in it, to put it in standard terms, which serves the production of the existing power relations and blah blah blah.

So in everything: power lies with those who control finance, not with those who know the matter upon which the money is to be spent. Thus, the holders of power are, in general, ignorant and malevolent, and the less they exercise their power the better.

Any power, of course, depends upon the values of the person exercising the power.

I am opposed to authority, that egg of misery and oppression; I am opposed to it largely for what it does to those who exercise it.

Power is everywhere...because it comes from everywhere.

When we attempt to exercise power or control over someone else, we cannot avoid giving that person the very same power or control over us.

One should try to locate power at the extreme of its exercise, where it is always less legal in character.

If one meets a powerful person--Adolf Hitler, Joe Stalin or Bill Gates--ask them five questions: "What power have you got? Where did you get it from? In whose interests do you exercise it? To whom are you accountable? And how can we get rid of you?