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.

Truth is not by nature free - nor error servile - but that its production is thoroughly imbued with relations of power.

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

If repression has indeed been the fundamental link between power, knowledge, and sexuality since the classical age, it stands to reason that we will not be able to free ourselves from it except at a considerable cost.

The soul is the prison of the body.

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.

But the guilty person is only one of the targets of punishment. For punishment is directed above all at others, at all the potentially guilty.