We have to be there at the birth of ideas, the bursting outward of their force: not in books expressing them, but in events manifesting this force, in struggles carried on around ideas, for or against them.

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.

The political and social processes by which the Western European societies were put in order are not very apparent, have been forgotten, or have become habitual. They are part of our most familiar landscape, and we don't perceive them anymore. But most of them once scandalized people.

I don't write a book so that it will be the final word; I write a book so that other books are possible, not necessarily written by me.

The university and in a general way, all teaching systems, which appear simply to disseminate knowledge, are made to maintain a certain social class in power; and to exclude the instruments of power of another social class.

People know what they do; frequently they know why they do what they do; but what they don't know is what what they do does.

In civilizations without boats, dreams dry up, espionage takes the place of adventure and the police take the place of pirates.