[John Boswell] introduction of the concept of "gay" (in the way he defines it) provides us both with a useful instrument of research and at the same time a better comprehension of how people actually conceive of themselves and their sexual behavior.

Sexual behavior is not, as is too often assumed, a superimposition of, on the one hand, desires which derive from natural instincts, and, on the other hand, of permissive or restrictive laws which tell us what we should or shouldn't do. Sexual behavior is more than that.

Unreason is in the same relation to reason as dazzlement to the brightness of daylight itself.

[Knowledge is governed not by] a theory of knowledge, but by a theory of discursive practice.

If those arrangements [the fundamental arrangements of knowledge] were to disappear as they appeared... then one can certainly wager that man would be erased, like a face drawn in sand at the edge of the sea.

Knowledge is not made for understanding; it is made for cutting.

The language of psychiatry, which is a monologue by reason about madness, could only have come into existence in such a silence.