A Quote by Michel Foucault

It is meaningless to speak in the name of - or against - Reason, Truth, or Knowledge.

Michel Foucault

Quote Topics

Against Knowledge Meaningless Name Reason Speak Truth

Quote Author

Michel Foucault
French - Historian
October 15, 1926 - June 25, 1984

cut off from the intuitive knowledge of ontological reason, technical knowledge is directionless and ultimately meaningless. When it dominates, life is deprived of an experience of depth, and it tends toward despair.

Mary Daly

If people depend on me to be a man of truth, I have to prove again and again and again and again that I am a man of truth. It cannot be that on Monday I am a man of truth, on Tuesday I speak three-quarters truth, Wednesday I speak half-truth, on Thursday I speak one-quarter truth, on Friday I don't speak at all, and on Saturday I can't even think how to speak the truth.

Harbhajan Singh Yogi

Hegel said that `truth` is subjective, thus rejecting the existence of any `truth` above or beyond human reason. All knowledge is human knowledge.

Jostein Gaarder

You can't be afraid to speak the truth. If you're speaking truthfully - no matter if you're White, Black, Hispanic, Asian - if it's the truth, it's the truth! And if that's what you're telling, you have no reason to be fearful, or, worry about people trying to diffuse what you're doing. Because, if you're speaking the truth, they can't beat the truth.

Warren Ballentine

Knowledge of facts is important. Knowledge of truth is essential. Yet our Lord's concern goes beyond mere head knowledge. He wants us not only to know the truth but also to obey the truth. He wants us to live the truth, practice the truth, and be conformed to and transformed by that truth.

Wayne Mack

Reason is non-negotiable. Try to argue against it, or to exclude it from some realm of knowledge, and you've already lost the argument, because you're using reason to make your case. ... We don't "believe" in reason.

Steven Pinker

There are different versions of Islam... it is meaningless to claim to speak in the name of a ‘real’ Islam.

Tariq Ali

Fear is bred from ignorance. So knowledge is a weapon against it, and reason is the tool of knowledge.

Jim Butcher

You're not going to be liked by everybody when you speak the truth. I don't speak the truth to put people down; I don't speak the truth to show disrespect.

Hope Solo

When you are deeply peaceful and confident that, because of Christ, God will bring you safely to his eternal kingdom and be the all-satisfying Treasure of your life forever, then you are free to see the truth, and love the truth, and speak the truth no matter what, and joyfully spread a passion for the truth whose name is Jesus.

John Piper

To speak of certain government and establishment institutions as 'the system' is to speak correctly . . . They are sustained by structural relationships even when they have lost all other meaning and purpose. People arrive at a factory and perform a totally meaningless task from eight to five without question because the structure demands it be that way. There's no villian, no 'mean guy' who wants them to live meaningless lives, it's just that the structure, the system demands it and no one is willing to take on the formidable task of changing the structure just because it is meaningless.

Robert M. Pirsig

Justice implies knowledge of the right and proper place for a thing or a being to be; of right as against wrong; of the mean and limit; of spiritual gain as against loss; of truth as against falsehood.

Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas

The thing about animals that speaks to me so much is that my passion for the animals and against animal abuse is based on the knowledge that these creatures which think and feel can't speak for themselves. I feel it is my responsibility to speak for those who can't speak for themselves.

Sam Simon

My art gets called political, as opposed to my intending it to be political. I think that's something that happens with black artists or marginalized voices trying to speak truth. Because there are things in the status quo to speak out against, speaking out against them will inherently be political.

Jamila Woods

All those formal systems, in mathematics and physics and the philosophy of science, which claim to give foundations for certain truth are surely mistaken. I am tempted to say that we do not look for truth, but for knowledge. But I dislike this form of words, for two reasons. First of all, we do look for truth, however we define it, it is what we find that is knowledge. And second, what we fail to find is not truth, but certainty; the nature of truth is exactly the knowledge that we do find.