We must cease once and for all to describe the effects of power in negative terms, it ‘excludes’, it ‘represses’... in fact power produces, it produces reality, it produces domains of objects and rituals of truth.

Michel Foucault
About This Quote

The effects of power are often mistaken for repression. However, power is an active force that brings reality into being. It is a creative force that shapes our world to the benefit of the people who use it wisely. If you think about it, if we could not use power, we would be limited to working within a small range of possibilities.

We would not be able to make a difference, and we would certainly not be able to change the world. In fact, power can change the world for the better by allowing people to take risks and accomplish great things.

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  1. The strategic adversary is fascism... the fascism in us all, in our heads and in our everyday behavior, the fascism that causes us to love power, to desire the very thing that dominates and exploits us.
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  3. The necessity of reform mustn’t be allowed to become a form of blackmail serving to limit, reduce, or halt the exercise of criticism. Under no circumstances should one pay attention to those who tell one: “Don’t criticize, since you’re not capable of carrying out a...
  4. In actual fact. The manifold sexualities - those which appear with the different ages (sexualities of the infant or the child), those which become fixated on particular tastes or practices (the sexuality of the invert, the gerontophile, the fetishist), those which, in a diffuse manner,...
  5. Discourse is not life; its time is not your time; in it, you will not be reconciled to death; you may have killed God beneath the weight of all that you have said; but don't imagine that, with all that you are saying you will...
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