Foucault, Michel

"We are trapped in a historical moment that we must continually interrogate."

"Meaning is not found; it is produced through discourse and power relations."

"The human being is an invention of recent date, and one perhaps nearing its end."

"Every system of knowledge contains within it the seeds of its own critique."

"We cannot escape history, but we can become conscious of how it shapes us."

"The question is not how to liberate sexuality but how sexuality became a domain of power."

"Language is not transparent; it structures reality as much as it describes it."

"What we must do is unmask the operations of power in the very places we thought were free."

"Every norm is a historical production that can be analyzed and contested."

"The self is not something to be discovered but something continually to be created."

"We must think about the world in such a way that change becomes possible."

"Power relations are not external to knowledge; they constitute knowledge."

"What counts is not the number of thoughts but their capacity to transform."

"The archives of knowledge reveal the contingency of what we take for granted."

"We are always already inside power relations; the question is how to transform them."

"The intellectual function is to struggle against the forms of power responsible for creating discourse."

"Every society produces a discourse about itself that serves to maintain its structures."

"What seems natural is usually the result of long historical processes of normalization."

"We must learn to read the traces of power in the smallest details of everyday life."

"The body is not the cause of our actions; rather, actions inscribe themselves upon the body."

"To understand how something came to be is the first step toward changing it."

"We are never outside of discourse; we are always already positioned within its operations."

"The question of identity is not about discovering who we are but about analyzing how identity is produced."

"What makes us unique is our capacity to resist and reinvent ourselves."

"Every system contains within itself the possibility of its own disruption."

"We must be attentive to the ways that power hides itself in the everyday."

"Language structures reality before it describes it."

"The subject is not sovereign; it is an effect of discourse and power."

"We must ask not what freedom is, but how freedom becomes possible within structures of constraint."

"Knowledge is always implicated in relations of power that give it meaning and effect."