Michel Foucault

"Speech implies a hierarchy; writing implies democracy."

"Visibility is a trap."

"What is philosophy if not a critical reflection on who we are?"

"The Western world has been pervaded by the anxiety to know."

"I am what I am because of what I have read."

"One must be optimistic about how the future might escape the present."

"Sexuality has no history; only discourses about sexuality do."

"What I am doing is cultural criticism, not psychology."

"Death is perhaps the only concept that defines us."

"Beware of the man who does not ask questions."

"Things are made through power relations, not discovered."

"The impossible is the real task of thought."

"If I should ever decide to set up a universal system of thought, I would fail."

"Understanding is an act of war."

"We must free ourselves from the sacralisation of history."

"The order of things is nothing but a human invention."

"What I want to say is that there is a difference between understanding and knowing."

"Every act of creation is first an act of destruction."

"Time flows differently for those who think."

"The real political task in a society such as ours is to criticize the working of institutions."

"Resistance is created through the spaces of power."

"We are always already caught in systems of meaning."

"Truth is not outside power."

"I would never die for an idea because ideas grow and change."

"One's duty is to speak the truth and to expose lies."

"The most important thing is the transformation of the subject."

"We must learn to see that we are not free."

"Every interpretation is a form of violence."

"There is no culture or civilization without transgression."

"Man is an invention of recent date."