In its function, the power to punish is not essentially different from that of curing or educating.

One thing in any case is certain: man is neither the oldest nor the most constant problem that has been posed for human knowledge.

Do not ask who I am and do not ask me to remain the same. More than one person, doubtless like me, writes in order to have no face.

It might be said that all knowledge is linked to the essential forms of cruelty.

Are the prisons overpopulated, or is the population over-imprisoned ?

A critique is not a matter of saying that things are not right as they are. It is a matter of pointing out on what kinds of assumptions, what kinds of familiar, unchallenged, unconsidered modes of thought the practices that we accept rest.

Penal law was not created by the common people, nor by the peasantry, nor by the proletariat, but entirely by the bourgeoisie as an important tactical weapon in this system of divisions which they wished to introduce.