304 Quotes by Michel Foucault

It is no longer possible to think in our day other than in the void left by man’s disappearance.

That is not all, however: this relationship between writing and death is also manifested in the effacement of the writing subject’s individual characteristics. Using all the contrivances that he steps up between himself and what he writes, the writing subject cancels out the signs of his particular individuality. As a result, the mark of the writer is reduced to nothing more that the singularity of his absence; he must assume the role of the dead man in the game of writing.

I’m not making a problem out of a personal question; I make of a personal question an absence of a problem.

It is meaningless to speak in the name of – or against – Reason, Truth, or Knowledge.

When I write, I do it above all to change myself and not to think the same thing as before.

Through Sade and Goya, the Western world received the possibility of transcending its reason in violence...

Modern man is not the man who goes off to discover himself, his secrets, and his hidden truth; he is a man who tries to invest himself.

It is over life, throughout its unfolding, that power establishes its dominion; death is power’s limit, the moment that escapes it; death becomes the most secret aspect of existence, the most private.

From a Christian point of view, human reason is madness compared to the reason of God, but divine reason appears as madness to human reason.