# Quote — Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality

> The most defenseless tenderness and the bloodiest of powers have a similar need of confession. Western man has become a confessing animal.

- Author: [Michel Foucault](https://www.leafyquotes.com/michel-foucault.md)
- Book: [The History of Sexuality](https://www.leafyquotes.com/michel-foucault/the-history-of-sexuality.md)
- Page: 59
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Michel_Foucault#History_of_Sexuality_(1976%E2%80%931984)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/michel-foucault/the-history-of-sexuality/the-most-defenseless

## More from this book

> What is important is that sex was not only a question of sensation and pleasure, of law and interdiction, but also of the true and the false.

p. 76 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/michel-foucault/the-history-of-sexuality/what-is-important.md)

> There are moments in life where the question of knowing whether one might think otherwise than one thinks and perceive otherwise than one sees is indispensable if one is to continue to observe or reflect... What is philosophy today... if it does not consist in, instead of legitimizing what we already know, undertaking to know how and how far it might be possible to think otherwise?... The ‘essay’ —which must be understood as a transforming test of oneself in the play of truth and not as a simplifying appropriation of someone else for the purpose of communication—is the living body of philosophy, if, at least, philosophy is today still what it was once, that is to say, an askesis, an exercise of the self, in thought.

p. 15 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/michel-foucault/the-history-of-sexuality/there-are-moments.md)

> Discourses are tactical elements or blocks operating in the field of force relations; there can exist different and even contradictory discourses within the same strategy; they can, on the contrary, circulate without changing their form from one strategy to another, opposing strategy.

p. 101 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/michel-foucault/the-history-of-sexuality/discourses-are-tactical.md)