# Quote — Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish

> The condemned man found himself transformed into a hero by the sheer extend of his widely advertised crimes, and sometimes the affirmation of his belated repentance. Against the law, against the rich, the powerful, the magistrates, the constabulary or the watch, against taxes and their collectors, he appeared to have waged a struggle with which one all too easily identified. The proclamation of these crimes blew up to epic proportions the tiny struggle that passed unperceived in everyday life. If the condemned man was shown to be repentant, accepting the verdict, asking both God and man for forgiveness for his crimes, it was as if he had come through some process of purification: he died, in his own way, like a saint.

- Author: [Michel Foucault](https://www.leafyquotes.com/michel-foucault.md)
- Book: [Discipline and Punish](https://www.leafyquotes.com/michel-foucault/discipline-and-punish.md)
- Page: 67
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Michel_Foucault#Discipline_and_Punish_(1977)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/michel-foucault/discipline-and-punish/the-condemned-man

## More from this book

> The perfect disciplinary apparatus would make it possible for a single haze to see everything constantly. A central point would be both the source of light illuminating everything, and a locus of convergence for everything that must be known: a perfect eye that nothing would escape and a centre towards which all gazes would be turned.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/michel-foucault/discipline-and-punish/the-perfect-disciplinary.md)

> It was an important moment. The old partners of the spectacle of punishment, the body and the blood, gave way. A new character came of the scene, masked. It was the end of a certain kind of tragedy; comedy began, with shadow play, faceless voices, impalpable entities. The apparatus of punitive justice must now bite into this bodiless reality.

p. 17 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/michel-foucault/discipline-and-punish/it-was-an-important.md)

> This dysfunction of power was related to a central excess: what might be called the monarchical 'super-power', which identified the right to punish with the personal power of the sovereign.

p. 80 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/michel-foucault/discipline-and-punish/this-dysfunction-of-power.md)