“We know that the war against intelligence is always waged in the name of common sense.”

Someone tells me: this kind of love is not viable. But how can you evaluate viability? Why is the viable a Good Thing? Why is it better to last than to burn?

It is no longer the sexual which is indecent, it is the sentimental.

I call the discourse of power any discourse that engenders blame, hence guilt, in its recipient.

What the Photograph reproduces to infinity has occurred only once: the Photograph mechanically repeats what could never be repeated existentially.

Every photograph is a certificate of presence.

The birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author.

Pleasure is continually disappointed, reduced, deflated, in favor of strong, noble values: Truth, Death, Progress, Struggle, Joy, etc. Its victorious rival is Desire: we are always being told about Desire, never about Pleasure.

Language is legislation, speech is its code. We do not see the power which is in speech because we forget that all speech is a classification, and that all classifications are oppressive.

The new is not a fashion, it is a value.

Isn’t desire always the same, whether the object is present or absent? Isn’t the object always absent? -This isn’t the same languor: there are two words: Pothos, desire for the absent being, and Himéros, the more burning desire for the present being.

To try to write love is to confront the muck of language: that region of hysteria where language is both too much and too little, excessive and impoverished.

There are people who think that wrestling is an ignoble sport. Wrestling is not sport, it is a spectacle, and it is no more ignoble to attend a wrestled performance of suffering than a performance of the sorrows of Arnolphe or Andromaque.

Ultimately, Photography is subversive, not when it frightens, repels, or even stigmatizes, but when it is pensive, when it thinks.

Where you are tender, you speak your plural.

Is not the most erotic part of the body wherever the clothing affords a glimpse?

Who speaks is not who writes, and who writes is not who is.

In many things it is not well to say, “Know thyself”; it is better to say, “Know others.”

He was trying to fit this Herakles onto the one he knew.

I own with reason: for, if men but knew Some fixed end to ills, they would be strong By some device unconquered to withstand Religions and the menacings of seers.

There is one safeguard known generally to the wise, which is an advantage and security to all, but especially to democracies as against despots – suspicion.

If you did not know at age five that the gods are made up beings and the myths made up stories, you are a fool.

As a vessel is known by the sound, whether it be cracked or not; so men are proved, by their speeches, whether they be wise or foolish.

Though thou art far away, thy rays are on Earth; Though thou art in their faces, no one knows thy going.

Know this, that troubles come swifter than the things we desire.