Foucault Surveillance Quotes & Sayings

There is no need for arms, physical violence, material constraints. Just a gaze. An inspecting gaze, a gaze that each individual under its weight will end by [internalising] to the point that they are their own overseer, each individual thus exercising surveillance over, and against themself. — Michel Foucault

Inequality may linger in the world of material things, but great music, great literature, great art and the wonders of science are, and should be, open to all. — Franklin D. Roosevelt

Our society is not one of spectacle but of surveillance. — Michel Foucault

The examination combines the techniques of an observing hierarchy and those of a normalizing judgement. It is a normalizing gaze, a surveillance that makes it possible to qualify, to classify and to punish. It establishes over individuals a visibility through which one differentiates them and judges them. That is why, in all the mechanisms of discipline, the examination is highly ritualized. In it are combined the ceremony of power and the form of the experiment, the deployment of force and the establishment of truth. At the heart of the procedures of discipline, it manifests the subjection of those who are perceived as objects and the objectification of those who are subjected. The superimposition of the power relations and knowledge relations assumes in the examination all its visible brilliance. — Michel Foucault

Charles Baudelaire would have the curious believe that the finest trick the Devil ever performed was in persuading the world that he did not exist. Baudelaire was mistaken. There was no persuasion. — John Zande

Is it surprising that the cellular prison, with its regular chronologies, forced labour, its authorities of surveillance and registration, its experts in normality, who continue and multiply the functions of the judge, should have become the modern instrument of penality? Is it surprising that prisons resemble factories, schools, barracks, hospitals, which all resemble prisons? — Michel Foucault

You could have Charles Manson as a father and end up a saint; you could have Mother Theresa as a mother and end up a serial killer. At the end of the day, you define the person you become. Not a strand of DNA. Not the parents you didn't get to choose. You." I — Julie Johnson

You can only see in others what is inside of you. — Zig Ziglar

Fame is a funny thing, like a secret, both are hard to keep. — Richard Peck

Mariah Carey is my favorite singer because her voice sounds utterly groundless. It's not even a human voice; it almost sounds mechanical. — Grimes

Surveillance is permanent in its effects, even if it is discontinuous in its action. — Michel Foucault