Michel Foucault Quotes

It is not difficult to know a thing; what is difficult is to know how to use what you know

Without knowledge action is useless and knowledge without action is futile.

Knowledge is that which benefits, not that which is memorized

To understand is hard. Once one understands, action is easy.

When I get the point, I often don't know what to do with it.

What I really need is to get clear out about what I must do, not what I must know, except insofar as knowledge precedes every act.

A man of knowledge lives by acting, not by thinking about acting.

To learn something but not to do is really not to learn. To know something but not to do is really not to know.

A minute of thought is greater than an hour of talk.

To understand the theory which underlies all things is not sufficient. Theory is but the preparation for practice.

Books should to one of these fours ends conduce, for wisdom, piety, delight, or use.

Knowledge is potential power. It transforms itself into actual power the moment you decisively act on it.

Great is the study that brings us into action.

The largest question facing the human race is not when will you learn, but when will you act on what you've already learned.

One does simply what one can in order to apply what one knows .

Knowing and knowing what to do about it were two different things.

Knowledge descries; wisdom applies.

Not to understand the doer is to have no certain knowledge of what has been done, or why it was undertaken

I will not give you counsel, saying do this, or do that. For not in doing or contriving, nor in choosing between this course and another, can I avail; but only in knowing what was and is, and in part also what shall be.

Action is with the scholar subordinate, but it is essential. Without it, he is not yet man. Without it, thought can never ripen into truth.

Great wisdom not applied to action and behavior is meaningless data.

Knowledge has no value except that which can be gained from its application toward some worthy end.

Words without experience are meaningless.

Knowledge is vain and fruitless which is not reduced to practice.