“All these present struggles revolve around the question: Who are we? They are a refusal of these abstractions, of economic and ideological state violence, which ignore who we are individually, and also a refusal of a scientific or administrative inquisition which determines who one is.”
Source: "The Subject and Power" (1982), p. 781
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Michel Foucault128
French philosopher 1926–1984Related quotes
Henry David Thoreau book Civil Disobedience
Civil Disobedience (1849)
Context: The soldier is applauded who refuses to serve in an unjust war by those who do not refuse to sustain the unjust government which makes the war; is applauded by those whose own act and authority he disregards and sets at naught; as if the state were penitent to that degree that it hired one to scourge it while it sinned, but not to that degree that it left off sinning for a moment.
Mengistu Haile Mariam (1937) Former dictator of Ethiopia
As quoted in John M. Cohen (1987) Integrated Rural Development: The Ethiopian Experience and the Debate, p. 213
Thomas Sowell (1930) American economist, social theorist, political philosopher and author
Source: The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy
“We refuse to believe that which we don't understand.”
Napoleon Hill (1883–1970) American author
Source: Think and Grow Rich: The Landmark Bestseller - Now Revised and Updated for the 21st Century
“He who refuses nothing…will soon have nothing to refuse.”
Martial book Epigrammata
XII, 79.
Epigrams (c. 80 – 104 AD)
Klaus Kinski (1926–1991) German actor
Source: Kinski Uncut : The Autobiography of Klaus Kinski (1996), p. 2
Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement
Edgar Guest (1881–1959) American writer
Source: All That Matters (1922), p.90 - The One in Ten, final stanza.