Giorgio Agamben on Michel Foucault’s “apparatus”

“It is imperative that sufficiently robust institutional structures, and adequate resources, are provided to insulate regulators from vested interests.”

“I think the past shows us that when freedom dies, it does so first slowly and then quickly. Slowly in terms of the deterioration of the climate of opinion so that liberty is more and more widely seen as secondary to other values, such as equality, security or nationhood, and then quickly in terms of legislative changes that actually take away people’s freedom…”

“What is a cause and what are the ontological presuppositions for there being such a thing? These are fundamental questions in philosophy. These questions are not empirical per se, but how you answer them can have a tremendous impact on how you go about hunting for causal relationships in the real world…”

“Good governance is a very odd concept in some of the markets I am looking at. Private governance in the market for hostages is “good” if live hostages are returned safely for the minimum ransom the kidnappers will settle for. But it still means that criminals or terrorists get a payment, which is unlikely to go to charity…”