The Order of Things, ​Michel Foucault

"It is comforting, however, and a source of profound relief to think that man is only a recent invention, a figure not yet two centuries old, a new wrinkle in our knowledge, and that he will disappear again as soon as that knowledge has discovered a new form."

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"Those things are 'convenient' which come sufficiently close to one another to be in juxtaposition; their edges touch, their fringes intermingle, the extremity of the one also denotes the beginning of the other. In this way, movement, influences, passions, and properties too, are communicated." ​ p. 18 ​

"Language partakes in the world-wide dissemination of similitudes and signatures. It must, therefore, be studied itself as a thing in nature." ​ p. 35 ​

"A thing can be absolute according to one relation yet relative according to others; order can be at once necessary and natural (in relation to thought) and arbitrary (in relation to things), since, according to the way in which we consider it, the same thing may be placed at differing points in our order." ​ p. 54

"It is in this strict sense that language is an analysis of thought: not a simple patterning, but a profound establishment of order in space."

p.83