Michel Foucault

Do not ask who I am and do not ask me to remain the same.

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.

The prison, as a principle of punishment, is a relatively recent invention.

Language is not an instrument of communication. It is a game.

Truth is a thing of this world: it is produced only by virtue of multiple forms of constraint.

The discourse of truth is a discourse of power.

Madness is the absence of a work of art.

The gaze is a political act.

Sexuality is not a natural given, but a historical construct.

I am not a fan of the idea of a 'true self'.

The individual is an effect of power.

Critique is a matter of flushing out that thought and trying to change it.

The history of sexuality is not the history of sexual practices, but the history of the discourse on sexuality.

I dream of a society where the power relations are transparent.

There is no escape from power; there is only a different kind of power.

The human sciences are a technology of power.

I am not a Marxist.

The 'subject' is not a universal category, but a historical one.

What is important is not to have a fixed identity, but to be capable of transforming oneself.

The human being is an invention of recent date. And one perhaps nearing its end.