"In the wonderment of this taxonomy, the thing we apprehend in one great leap, the thing that, by means of the fable, is demonstrated as the exotic charm of another system of thought, is the limitation of our own, the stark impossibility of thinking that.”
Addressing his incentive to write this book, Foucault recites a passage from a Chinese encyclopedia which he once read in a book by Borges. The animals were classified into bizarre groupings according to the experience of the people with these animals. Lacking the scientific rigor of the age of reason, this system of classification struck Foucault as humorous. Only in his further consideration of the system does he realize that this very system is intellectually fascinating because it demonstrates how disparate the functions of the human mind can manifest.
“In any given culture and at any given moment, there is always only one 'episteme' that defines the conditions of possibility of all knowledge, whether expressed in theory or silently invested in a practice.”
In this quotation, Foucault is describing how knowledge is conditioned. People may only discover and theorize within certain silently agreed upon boundaries of thought, which often remain unspoken and implied from age to age. Because the human mind is limitless, there must be certain standards of what composes an acceptable thought in order to facilitate some common ground of communication and progress.
“From the point of view of wealth, there is no difference between need, comfort and pleasure.”
This is an ironic maxim of familiarity. From the perspective of plenty, true need is something unintelligible, remaining outside the sphere of possibilities. In theory to be poor is to possess less wealth. In reality, to be poor is to view every moment through a lens of survival and necessity.
"Marxism exists in nineteenth-century thought like a fish in water: that it, it is unable to breathe anywhere else."
As a historian, Foucault is examining thought from a perspective of already existing patterns. He notices something unique about Marxism -- it's moment in history. Marxism served as a successful ideology for a unique group of people in a specific moment of time, which, in Foucault's opinion, is not replicable.
