From the idea that the self is not given to us, I think there is only one practical consequence: we have to create ourselves as a work of art.

The real political task in a society such as ours is to criticize the workings of institutions that appear to be both neutral and independent, to criticize and attack them in such a manner that the political violence that has always exercised itself obscurely through them will be unmasked, so that one can fight against them.

We must uncover our rituals for what they are: completely arbitrary things, tied to our bourgeois way of life; it isgood-and that is the real theater-totranscend them in the manner of play, bymeans of games and irony; it is good to be dirty and bearded, to have long hair,to look like a girl when one is a boy (and vice versa); one must put "inplay," show up, transform and reversethe systems which quietly order us about.

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

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

Believe what is productive is not sedentary but nomadic.

I don't feel that it is necessary to know exactly what I am.