Create Yours

Top 20 Michel de Certeau Quotes (2025 Update)

Michel de Certeau Quote: “To walk is to lack a place.”

1. “To walk is to lack a place.”

— Michel de Certeau

Michel de Certeau Quote: “Everyday life invents itself by poaching in countless ways on the property of others.”

2. “Everyday life invents itself by poaching in countless ways on the property of others.”

— Michel de Certeau

Michel de Certeau Quote: “An absence of meaning opens a gap in time.”

3. “An absence of meaning opens a gap in time.”

— Michel de Certeau

Michel de Certeau Quote: “A memory is only a Prince Charming who stays just long enough to awaken the Sleeping Beauties of our wordless stories.”

4. “A memory is only a Prince Charming who stays just long enough to awaken the Sleeping Beauties of our wordless stories.”

— Michel de Certeau

Michel de Certeau Quote: “The walking of passers-by offers a series of turns and detours that can be compared to “turns of phrase” or “stylistic figures.” There is a rhetoric of walking. The art of “turning” phrases finds an equivalent in an art of composing a path.”

5. “The walking of passers-by offers a series of turns and detours that can be compared to “turns of phrase” or “stylistic figures.” There is a rhetoric of walking. The art of “turning” phrases finds an equivalent in an art of composing a path.”

— Michel de Certeau

Michel de Certeau Quote: “The created order is everywhere punched and torn open by ellipses, drifts, and leaks of meaning: it is a sieve-order.”

6. “The created order is everywhere punched and torn open by ellipses, drifts, and leaks of meaning: it is a sieve-order.”

— Michel de Certeau

Michel de Certeau Quote: “To walk is to lack a place. It is the indefinite process of being absent and in search of a proper.”

7. “To walk is to lack a place. It is the indefinite process of being absent and in search of a proper.”

— Michel de Certeau

Michel de Certeau Quote: “More than its utilitarian and technocratic transparency, it is the opaque ambivalence of its oddities that makes the city livable.”

8. “More than its utilitarian and technocratic transparency, it is the opaque ambivalence of its oddities that makes the city livable.”

— Michel de Certeau

Michel de Certeau Quote: “Political organizations have slowly substituted themselves for the Churches as the places for believing practices. Politics has once again become religious.”

9. “Political organizations have slowly substituted themselves for the Churches as the places for believing practices. Politics has once again become religious.”

— Michel de Certeau

Michel de Certeau Quote: “New York has never learnt the art of growing old by playing on all its pasts. Its present invents itself, from hour to hour, in the act of throwing away its previous accomplishments and challenging the future. A city composed of paroxysmal places in monumental reliefs.”

10. “New York has never learnt the art of growing old by playing on all its pasts. Its present invents itself, from hour to hour, in the act of throwing away its previous accomplishments and challenging the future. A city composed of paroxysmal places in monumental reliefs.”

— Michel de Certeau

Michel de Certeau Quote: “The media transforms the great silence of things into its opposite. Formerly constituting a secret, the real now talks constantly. News reports, information, statistics, and surveys are everywhere.”

11. “The media transforms the great silence of things into its opposite. Formerly constituting a secret, the real now talks constantly. News reports, information, statistics, and surveys are everywhere.”

— Michel de Certeau

Michel de Certeau Quote: “It seems thus possible to give a preliminary definition of walking as a space of enunciation.”

12. “It seems thus possible to give a preliminary definition of walking as a space of enunciation.”

— Michel de Certeau

Michel de Certeau Quote: “The only freedom supposed to be left to the masses is that of grazing on the ration of simulacra the system distributes to each individual.”

13. “The only freedom supposed to be left to the masses is that of grazing on the ration of simulacra the system distributes to each individual.”

— Michel de Certeau

Michel de Certeau Quote: “The sick man is taken away by the institution that takes charge not of the individual, but of his illness, an isolated object transformed or eliminated by technicians devoted to the defense of health the way others are attached to the defense of law and order or tidiness.”

14. “The sick man is taken away by the institution that takes charge not of the individual, but of his illness, an isolated object transformed or eliminated by technicians devoted to the defense of health the way others are attached to the defense of law and order or tidiness.”

— Michel de Certeau

Michel de Certeau Quote: “Every story is a travel story – a spatial practice.”

15. “Every story is a travel story – a spatial practice.”

— Michel de Certeau

Michel de Certeau Quote: “One is a socialist because one used to be one, no longer going to demonstrations, attending meetings, sending in one’s dues, in short, without paying.”

16. “One is a socialist because one used to be one, no longer going to demonstrations, attending meetings, sending in one’s dues, in short, without paying.”

— Michel de Certeau

Michel de Certeau Quote: “History begins at ground level, with footsteps.”

17. “History begins at ground level, with footsteps.”

— Michel de Certeau

Michel de Certeau Quote: “They become liberated spaces that can be occupied. A rich indetermination gives them, by means of a semantic rarefaction, the function of articulating a second, poetic geography on top of the geography of the literal, forbidden or permitted meaning. They insinuate other routes into the functionalist and historical order of movement. Walking follows them: ‘I fill this great empty space with a beautiful name.”

18. “They become liberated spaces that can be occupied. A rich indetermination gives them, by means of a semantic rarefaction, the function of articulating a second, poetic geography on top of the geography of the literal, forbidden or permitted meaning. They insinuate other routes into the functionalist and historical order of movement. Walking follows them: ‘I fill this great empty space with a beautiful name.”

— Michel de Certeau

Michel de Certeau Quote: “Places are fragmentary and inward-turning histories, pasts that others are not allowed to read, accumulated times that can be unfolded but like stories held in reserve, remaining in an enigmatic state, symbolizations encysted in the pain or pleasure of he body. ‘I feel good here’: the well-being under-expressed in the language it appears in like a fleeting glimmer is a spatial practice.”

19. “Places are fragmentary and inward-turning histories, pasts that others are not allowed to read, accumulated times that can be unfolded but like stories held in reserve, remaining in an enigmatic state, symbolizations encysted in the pain or pleasure of he body. ‘I feel good here’: the well-being under-expressed in the language it appears in like a fleeting glimmer is a spatial practice.”

— Michel de Certeau

Michel de Certeau Quote: “Reading thus introduces an “art” which is anything but passive.”

20. “Reading thus introduces an “art” which is anything but passive.”

— Michel de Certeau

Michel de Certeau Quote: “We travel abroad to discover in distant lands something whose presence at home has become unrecognisable.”

21. “We travel abroad to discover in distant lands something whose presence at home has become unrecognisable.”

— Michel de Certeau

Motivational Quotes

Motivational Quotes

Inspirational Entrepreneurship Quotes

Inspirational Entrepreneurship Quotes

Positive Quotes

Positive Quotes

Albert Einstein Quotes

Albert Einstein Quotes

Motivational Quotes

Motivational Quotes

INSPIRATIONAL SUCCESS MOTIVATIONAL

Inspirational Entrepreneurship Quotes

Inspirational Entrepreneurship Quotes

ENTREPRENEURSHIP BUSINESS INSPIRATIONAL

Positive Quotes

Positive Quotes

Albert Einstein Quotes

Albert Einstein Quotes

ENTREPRENEURSHIP BUSINESS INSPIRATIONAL

Steve Jobs Quotes

Steve Jobs Quotes

ENTREPRENEURSHIP BUSINESS APPLE

Inspirational Quotes

Inspirational Quotes

COURAGE MOTIVATIONAL STRENGTH

INSPIRATIONAL SUCCESS MOTIVATIONAL

Swami Vivekananda Quotes

Swami Vivekananda Quotes

LIFE SPIRITUALITY

Save image...
Permalink
Open in new tab
Copy quote text

Beautiful Wallpapers and Images

We hope you enjoyed our collection of 20 Michel de Certeau Quotes.

All the images on this page were created with QuoteFancy Studio.

Use QuoteFancy Studio to create high-quality images for your desktop backgrounds, blog posts, presentations, social media, videos, posters, and more.

Thank you!

Please check your email.