Knowledge is not for knowing: knowledge is for cutting.
Interpretation
Knowledge should be used as a tool for change and action, not merely for accumulation.
This quote by Michel Foucault suggests that the purpose of knowledge goes beyond simple understanding; it should actively engage with the world to create impact and provoke thought. Knowledge is thus portrayed not as a passive commodity, but as a powerful instrument for cutting through ignorance and challenging established norms, leading to transformation and insight.
In practice
A speaker addressing students at a graduation ceremony might use this quote to emphasize the importance of applying their knowledge to make a difference in society.
A real subjection is born mechanically from a fictitious relation [...] He who is subjected to a field of visibility, and who knows it, assumes responsibility for the constraints of power; he makes them play spontaneously upon himself; he inscribed in himself the power relation in which he simultaneously plays both roles; he becomes the principle of his own subjection.
Matthey, a Geneva physician very close to Rousseau's influence, formulates the prospect for all men of reason: 'Do not glory in your state, if you are wise and civilized men; an instant suffices to disturb and annihilate that supposed wisdom of which you are so proud; an unexpected event, a sharp and sudden emotion of the soul will abruptly change the most reasonable and intelligent man into a raving idiot.
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.
I donβt feel that it is necessary to know exactly what I am. The main interest in life and work is to become someone else that you were not in the beginning. If you knew when you began a book what you would say at the end, do you think that you would have the courage to write it? What is true for writing and for love relationships is true also for life. The game is worthwhile insofar as we donβt know what will be the end.
You may have killed God beneath the weight of all that you have said; but don't imagine that, with all that you are saying, you will make a man that will live longer than he.
The work of an intellectual is not to mould the political will of others; it is, through the analyses that he does in his own field, to re-examine evidence and assumptions, to shake up habitual ways of working and thinking, to dissipate conventional familiarities, to re-evaluate rules and institutions and to participate in the formation of a political will (where he has his role as citizen to play).
In the end I do respond to my own instincts. Sometimes they're successful, and obviously sometimes they're not. But you have to, I think, remain true to what you believe in.
Happy the hare at morning, for she cannot read The hunter's waking thoughts.
The lessons I learned in Sunday School have kept me on track
A man must be big enough to admit his mistakes, smart enough to profit from them, and strong enough to correct them.
Yes,I'm afraid you're right. Trial and error isn't a bad way to learn how to build an aircraft,but it can be a disastrous way to learn how to build a civilization.
Even as wisdom often comes from the mouths of babes, so does it often come from the mouths of old people. The golden rule is to test everything in the light of reason and experience, no matter from where it comes.
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