I don't feel that it is necessary to know exactly what I am. The main interest in life and work is to become someone else that you were not in the beginning.

Michel Foucault

Philosophers

Michel Foucault

One of the most influential French philosophers of the 20th century, Michel Foucault exposed how power and knowledge are inextricably entangled. Through works including Madness and Civilization, Discipline and Punish, and The Order of Things, he fundamentally challenged the mechanisms by which modern society manages and disciplines human beings. His archaeological and genealogical methods reshaped the study of power across the humanities.

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Source: Martin, Rux (interviewer), 'Truth, Power, Self: An Interview with Michel Foucault', 1982Verified

Michel Foucault's Other Quotes

Where there is power, there is resistance.

Knowledge is not made for understanding; it is made for cutting.

People know what they do; frequently they know why they do what they do; but what they don't know is what what they do does.

Visibility is a trap.

Related Quotes

The unexamined life is not worth living.

-- Socrates

It is not living that matters, but living rightly.

-- Socrates

Live unknown.

-- Epicurus

He who would be tranquil should not undertake too many things, either private or public.

-- Democritus

Zen is not a system of dhyana as practised in India and by other Buddhist schools in China. It is a way of life.

-- D. T. Suzuki

We discover our fudo (climate and culture) as an expression of our own self-understanding.

-- Tetsuro Watsuji