Michel Quotes & Sayings

For millennia, man remained what he was for Aristotle: a living animal with the additional capacity for a political existence; modern man is an animal whose politics places his existence as a living being in question — Michel Foucault

I determine nothing; I do not comprehend things; I suspend judgment; I examine. — Michel De Montaigne

Our speech has its weaknesses and its defects, like all the rest. Most of the occasions for the troubles of the world are grammatical. — Michel De Montaigne

Examples teach us that in military affairs, and all others of a like nature, study is apt to enervate and relax the courage of man, rather than to give strength and energy to the mind. — Michel De Montaigne

Men of simple understanding, little inquisitive and little instructed, make good Christians. — Michel De Montaigne

But it remains the case that, on the level of consumption, the preeminence of the twentieth century was indisputable: nothing. — Michel Houellebecq

What is this peace, different from that which the world gives? This peace is the one your love gives ... a peace greater than suffering, not a peace without war, but a peace in spite of war, during war, above war, the peace of the soul, having, through love, its whole life in heaven and thus enjoying the peace of heaven in spite of everything which may happen on earth around it and against it. - from Michel Carrouges, Soldier of the Spirit — Charles De Foucauld

I turn my gaze inward. I fix it there and keep it busy. I look inside myself. I continually observe myself. — Michel De Montaigne

The Americans are completely stupid. The intellectual level in any single European country is higher than in America. — Michel Houellebecq

By recycling pre-existing material, Shakespeare seemed to endorse a view common in his time, which has become even more entrenched in the 400 years since: that all the truly essential stories are already in the bag. — Michel Faber

It's one of many ways that Barack shows me and the girls how special we are. And that's the thing that touches me about him. I don't care what's on his plate. I don't care what he's struggling with. When he steps off that elevator into our residence he is Barack and dad. And there's just those little things that you do that remind you, that you know, I still got ya. — Michel'le

Life begins at fifty, that's true, inasmuch as it ends at forty. — Michel Houellebecq

I want to be loved despite my faults. It isn't exactly true that I'm a provocateur. A real provocateur is someone who says things he doesn't think, just to shock. I try to say what I think. — Michel Houellebecq

A truly modern man, William Rackham is what might be called a superstitious atheist Christian; that is, he believes in a God who, while He may no longer be responsible for the sun rising, the saving of the Queen or the provision of daily bread, is still the prime suspect when anything goes wrong. — Michel Faber

I hadn't seen any novel make the statement that entering the workforce was like entering the grave. That from then on, nothing happens and you have to pretend to be interested in your work. And, furthermore, that some people have a sex life and others don't just because some are more attractive than others. I wanted to acknowledge that if people don't have a sex life, it's not for some moral reason, it's just because they're ugly. Once you've said it,
it sounds obvious, but I wanted to say it. — Michel Houellebecq

For there is no air that men so greedily draw in, that diffuses itself so soon, and that penetrates so deep as that of license. — Michel De Montaigne

Lovers are angry, reconciled, entreat, thank, appoint, and finally speak all things, by their. — Michel De Montaigne

Certainly man is a remarkably vain, variable, and elusive subject.10 It is hard to base any constant, uniform judgment upon him. — Michel De Montaigne

What a wonderful thing it is that drop of seed, from which we are produced, bears in itself the impressions, not only of the bodily shape, but of the thoughts and inclinations of our fathers! — Michel De Montaigne

This great world of ours is the looking-glass in which we must gaze to come to know ourselves from the right slant. Michel de Montaigne — Patti Miller

The wise man should withdraw his soul within, out of the crowd, and keep it in freedom and power to judge things freely; but as for externals, he should wholly follow the accepted fashions and forms. — Michel De Montaigne

No one country can confront them alone ... the only way forward is together. — Michel'le

Fame and tranquility can never be bedfellows. — Michel De Montaigne

The worthiest man to be known, and for a pattern to be presented to the world, he is the man of whom we have most certain knowledge. He hath been declared and enlightened by the most clear-seeing men that ever were; the testimonies we have of him are in faithfulness and sufficiency most admirable. — Michel De Montaigne

Michel Gondry's 'Green Hornet' was another franchise flick that felt like it came out of left field - I thought in a good way, but most audiences disagreed. — Annalee Newitz

The man who thinks he knows does not yet know what knowing is — Michel De Montaigne

If I'm away from painting for a week, I get bored. — Jean-Michel Basquiat

As great enmities spring from great friendships, and mortal distempers from vigorous health, so do the most surprising and the wildest frenzies from the high and lively agitations of our souls. — Michel De Montaigne

Not because Socrates said so, ... I look upon all men as my compatriots. — Michel De Montaigne

I'm not a real person. I'm a legend. — Jean-Michel Basquiat

One should try to locate power at the extreme of its exercise, where it is always less legal in character. — Michel Foucault

A football match should be decided by an action of play. Not some contrived process whose end result is to mark a fine player such as Bossis, Baresi or Baggio for the rest of his career. — Michel Patini

The knowledge of courtesy and good manners is a very necessary study. It is like grace and beauty, that which begets liking and an inclination to love one another at the first sight. — Michel De Montaigne

For the establishment, philosophy is both an elitist and an idealist discipline: In high school, it is a compulsory subject; at university, they teach the idealist line. They are conducting a conversation with themselves. — Michel Onfray

Those who love life do not read. Nor do they go to the movies, actually. No matter what might be said, access to the artistic universe is more or less entirely the preserve of those who are a little fed up with the world. — Michel Houellebecq

Stubborn and ardent clinging to one's opinion is the best proof of stupidity. — Michel De Montaigne

To understand the essence and workings of insanity, Gallus Vibius strained his mind so that he tore his judgment from its seat and could never get it back again: he could boast he became mad through wisdom.1 — Michel De Montaigne

Give me the provisions and whole apparatus of a kitchen, and I would starve. — Michel De Montaigne

The lyricism of marginality may find inspiration in the image of the outlaw, the great social nomad, who prowls on the confines of a docile, frightened order. — Michel Foucault

Just as in habiliments it is a sign of weakness to wish to make oneself noticeable by some peculiar and unaccustomed fashion, so, in language, the quest for new-fangled phrases and little-known words comes from a puerile and pedantic ambition. — Michel De Montaigne

My inspiration is my life, what I see happening around me. It can be history and, quite often, plain traditional fairy tales. But I never adapt; I nourish myself with old stories, and then create my own tales. — Michel Ocelot

Let us ask ... how things work at the level of on-going subjugation, at the level of those continuous and uninterrupted processes which subject our bodies, govern our gestures, dictate our behaviors, etc ... we should try to discover how it is that subjects are gradually, progressively, really and materially constituted through a multiplicity of organisms, forces, energies, materials, desires, thoughts, etc. We should try to grasp subjection in its material instance as a constitution of subjects. — Michel Foucault

Michel Platini is a good player, not a great player — Eamon

True freedom is to have power over oneself for everything. — Michel De Montaigne

Away, and she could carry a bag on each arm, providing — Michel Faber

It wasn't easy to cram your whole life into thirty kilos of luggage. — Michel Houellebecq

they argue that belief in a transcendent being conveys a genetic advantage: that couples who follow one of the three religions of the Book and maintain patriarchal values have more children than atheists or agnostics. You see less education among women, less hedonism and individualism. And to a large degree, this belief in transcendence can be passed on genetically. Conversions, or cases where people grow up to reject family values, are statistically insignificant. In the vast majority of cases, people stick with whatever metaphysical system they grow up in. That's why atheist humanism - the basis of any 'pluralist society' - is doomed. — Michel Houellebecq

I seek in books only to give myself pleasure by honest amusement; or if I study, I seek only the learning that treats of the knowledge of myself and instructs me in how to die well and live well. — Michel De Montaigne

People are suspicious of single men on vacation, after they get to a certain age: they assume that they're selfish, and probably a bit pervy. I can't say they're wrong. — Michel Houellebecq

To know much is often the cause of doubting more. — Michel De Montaigne

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 reform." That's ministerial cabinet talk. Critique doesn't have to be the premise of a deduction that concludes, "this, then, is what needs to be done." It should be an instrument for those for who fight, those who resist and refuse what is. Its use should be in processes of conflict and confrontation, essays in refusal. It doesn't have to lay down the law for the law. It isn't a stage in a programming. It is a challenge directed to what is. — Michel Foucault

It should be noted that children at play are not playing about; their games should be seen as their most serious-minded activity. — Michel De Montaigne

History indulges strange whims in the way it dresses its women. — Michel Faber

We are never at home, we are always beyond. Fear, desire, hope, project us toward the future and steal from us the consideration of what is, to busy us with what will be, even when we shall no longer be."
-from "Our feelings reach out beyond us — Michel De Montaigne

To work is to undertake to think something other than what one has thought before — Michel Foucault

No spirited mind remains within itself; it is always aspiring and going beyond its strength; it has impulses beyond its power of achievement. — Michel De Montaigne

Depressive lucidity, usually described as a radical withdrawal from ordinary human concerns, generally manifests itself by a profound indifference to things which are genuinely of minor interest. Thus it is possible to imagine a depressed lover, while the idea of a depressed patriot seems frankly inconceivable. — Michel Houellebecq

We arrived in Argentina with a lot of injured players, including our goalkeeper. Also we were unlucky to be drawn in the same group as the two tournament favourites Italy and Argentina. — Michel Patini

I believe my past is my strength. — Michel Martelly

Most of my work is okay to look at on a TV screen or a flat screen, but this is actually much better in a theatre. — Michel Auder

If my intentions were not to be read in my eyes and voice, I should not have survived so long without quarrels and without harm, seeing the indiscreet freedom with which I say, right or wrong, whatever comes into my head. — Michel De Montaigne

Death pays all debts. — Michel De Montaigne

Why am I so interested in politics? But if I were to answer you very simply, I would say this: why shouldn't I be interested? That is to say, what blindness, what deafness, what density of ideology would have to weigh me down to prevent me from being interested in what is probably the most crucial subject to our existence, that is to say the society in which we live, the economic relations within which it functions, and the system of power which defines the regular forms and the regular permissions and prohibitions of our conduct. The essence of our life consists, after all, of the political functioning of the society in which we find ourselves.
So I can't answer the question of why I should be interested; I could only answer it by asking why shouldn't I be interested? — Michel Foucault

The world outside had its own rules, and those rules were not human. — Michel Houellebecq

Wisdom has its excesses, and has no less need of moderation than folly. — Michel De Montaigne

No pleasure is fully delightful without communications, and no delight absolute except imparted. — Michel De Montaigne

Every one is well or ill at ease, according as he finds himself! not he whom the world believes, but he who believes himself to be so, is content; and in him alone belief gives itself being and reality — Michel De Montaigne

There are really exciting things happening in genetic and neurobiology right now, and really looking at the ways in which different not just illnesses, but social conditions and social pressures can actually lead to actual brain changes. — Jonathan Michel Metzl

I don't write because I want to write. I do it because I have to. I just wish it was my day job. — Stephanie Michel

... modern man no longer communicates with the madman [ ... ] There is no common language: or rather, it no longer exists; the constitution of madness as mental illness, at the end of the eighteenth century, bears witness to a rupture in a dialogue, gives the separation as already enacted, and expels from the memory all those imperfect words, of no fixed syntax, spoken falteringly, in which the exchange between madness and reason was carried out. The language of psychiatry, which is a monologue by reason about madness, could only have come into existence in such a silence. — Michel Foucault

For truth itself does not have the privilege to be employed at any time and in every way; its use, noble as it is, has its circumscriptions and limits. — Michel De Montaigne

The world changes too fast. You take your eyes off something that's always been there, and the next minute it's just a memory. — Michel Faber

So I write melodies - thirty, forty, fifty - then I cast them off until I have just two or three. If only one is needed, I go see the director and ask him to decide. — Michel Legrand

The absence of the will to live is, alas, not sufficient to make one want to die. — Michel Houellebecq

And more than once in the course of time, the same theme reappears: among the mystics of the fifteenth century, it has become the motif of the soul as a skiff, abandoned on the infinite sea of desires, in the sterile field of cares and ignorance, among the mirages of knowledge, amid the unreason of the world - a craft at the mercy of the sea's great madness, unless it throws out a solid anchor, faith, or raises its spiritual sails so that the breath of God may bring it to port. — Michel Foucault

The most important lesson I have ever learned is that I haven't learned anything. — Michel Templet

Falling in love: how does it work? Over the years we gather the odd clue, but nothing adds up. We'd like to think we have a picture of our future partner projected in our mind, all their qualities recorded as if on film, and we just search the planet for that person until we find them, sitting in Casablanca waiting to be recognised. But in reality our love lives are blown around by career and coincidence, not to mention lack of nerve on given occasions, and we never have respectable reasons for anything until we have to make them up afterwards for the benefit of our curious friends. — Michel Faber

Nature, keeping only useless secrets, had placed within reach and in sight of human beings the things it was necessary for them to know. — Michel Foucault

The question deserves to be asked: Is hating one's nation really such a bad thing? Or perhaps more importantly, after the crimes our government has committed, what moral self-respecting person can truly love this nation? — Michel Templet

The match against Brazil was football at its best. Both sides had opportunities to win the game. — Michel Patini

We are born to inquire after truth; it belongs to a greater power to possess it. It is not, as Democritus said, hid in the bottom of the deeps, but rather elevated to an infinite height in the divine knowledge. — Michel De Montaigne

Our moral frailty is a strange consolation. — Jen Pollock Michel

...men are as vulnerable to joy as they are to suffering. — Michel Bernanos

I had a lot of encouragement and tolerance from my parents, but I also have many friends who didn't get that from their parents and in a way they have more strength from spending years where nobody believed in them. — Michel Gondry

With Derrida, you can hardly misread him, because he's so obscure. Every time you say, "He says so and so," he always says, "You misunderstood me." But if you try to figure out the correct interpretation, then that's not so easy. I once said this to Michel Foucault, who was more hostile to Derrida even than I am, and Foucault said that Derrida practiced the method of obscurantisme terroriste (terrorism of obscurantism). We were speaking French. And I said, "What the hell do you mean by that?" And he said, "He writes so obscurely you can't tell what he's saying, that's the obscurantism part, and then when you criticize him, he can always say, 'You didn't understand me; you're an idiot.' That's the terrorism part." And I like that. So I wrote an article about Derrida. I asked Michel if it was OK if I quoted that passage, and he said yes. — John Rogers Searle

As a teenager, Michel believed that suffering conferred dignity on a person. Now he had to admit that he had been wrong. What conferred dignity on people was television. — Michel Houellebecq

The only good histories are those that have been written by the persons themselves who commanded in the affairs whereof they write. — Michel De Montaigne

Lost in the barrage of images and self-serving analysis are the economic and social causes of the conflict. — Michel Chossudovsky

Digital is expensive, from the computers to the professional software to the technicians, but digital helps me to create more beautiful images in less time. — Michel Ocelot

Why are there such long words in the world, Miss?' enquires Sophie, when the mineralogy lesson is over.
'One long difficult word is the same as a whole sentence full of short easy ones, Sophie,' says Sugar. 'It saves time and paper.' Seeing that the child is unconvinced, she adds, 'If books were written in such a way that every person, no matter how young, could understand everything in them, they would be enormously long books. Would you wish to read a book that was a thousand pages long, Sophie?'
Sophie answers without hesitation.
'I would read a thousand million pages, Miss, if all the words were words I could understand. — Michel Faber

Music is the human treatment of sounds. — Jean Michel Jarre

The love of a dog is a pure thing. He gives you a trust which is total. You must not betray it. — Michel Houellebecq

All too often modern man becomes the plaything of his circumstances because he no longer has any leisure time; he doesn't know how to provide himself with the leisure he needs to stop to take a good look at himself. — Michel Quoist

Undoubtedly, the best way for a consumer to have a good time in the 2010s was to turn to Korean products: for a car, Kia and Hyundai; for electronics, LG and Samsung. — Michel Houellebecq

the tables were taken by law students talking about rave parties or 'junior associates', in other words, those things which interest law students — Michel Houellebecq

The sage says that all that is under heaven incurs the same law and the same fate. — Michel De Montaigne

We seem ambitious God's whole work to undo ... With new diseases on ourselves we war, And with new physic, a worse engine far. — Michel De Montaigne

For this album I was determined to do it my way. Take my time. I'm gonna win, lose or draw on my own. — Pras Michel

Now abideth beauty, truth, and intensity; but the greatest of these is intensity. — Michel Houellebecq

There were no oceans on Oasis, no large bodies of water, and presumably no fish.
He wondered whether this would cause comprehension problems when it came to certain crucial fish-related Bible stories. There were so many of those: Jonah and the whale, the miracle of the loaves and the fishes, the Galilean disciples being fishermen, the whole 'fishers of men' analogy . . . the bit in Matthew 13 about the kingdom of heaven being like a net cast into the sea, gathering fish of every kind . . . Even in the opening chapter of Genesis, the first animals God made were sea creatures. How much of the Bible would he have to give up as untranslatable? — Michel Faber