Power Quotes

"The look of the white man, a white gaze, an optical organ phosphorescent as a result of all the powers accumulated by the colonizer."

"The colonizer is never close to the colonized except to give orders."

"Where formerly we had relations of man to man, we now see only crude relations of strength."

"The colonized learns quickly that naked force is the only language the colonizer understands."

"Colonialism is not satisfied merely with holding a people in its grip and emptying the native's brain of all form and content."

"The colonial authority is absolute and omnipresent."

"The colonized wears the uniform and takes up the colonizer's weapons."

"The colonized individual who is convinced that this is the only language the colonizer understands will naturally use it."

"Semiotic systems are not neutral tools but instruments of power."

"The production of meaning is always tied to power relations."

"The production of subjectivity is everybody's business, not just the province of experts."

"Language is not made to be believed but to be obeyed and to make you act"

"Power is not something one has but something one does"

"To understand modernity, we must understand how power operates not through prohibition but through the management of life itself."

"Power operates most effectively when it becomes invisible, when we no longer recognize it as power."

"The state seeks to manage not just our bodies but our very capacity to think and feel."

"Power operates most efficiently when it appears to have disappeared."

"The obscene gesture of the system is that it asks us to enjoy it."

"The margin is not peripheral; it is constitutive of the center."

"Power operates through the construction of what seems natural or inevitable."

"The archive is a space where power relations become visible."

"Power corrupts when it is not subjected to rational discourse"

"The obscene enjoyment of power is what drives most human behavior."

"Desire is not lack; it is productive force."

"Desire flows; it does not accumulate."

"Machinic desire precedes human desire."

"Power relations are woven into every fabric of society."

"Desire is revolutionary by nature."

"Faciality is a regime of control."

"Power, not truth, is what the world obeys."