If there is a kind of "proof" of the sincerity of the parrhesiastes, it is his courage... Saying something dangerous—different from what the majority believes—is a strong indication that he is a parrhesiastes.

In the Greek conception of parrhesia... truth-having is guaranteed by the possession of... moral qualities... required... to know... and... convey such truth...

The second characteristic of parrhesia... there is always an exact coincidence between belief and truth.

The commitment... in parrhesia is linked to... a difference of status between the speaker and his audience... the parrhesiastes says something which is dangerous to himself and thus involves a risk...

In parrhesia, the speaker makes it... clear and obvious that what he says is his own opinion... by avoiding... rhetorical form which would veil what he thinks. ...The parrhesiastes uses the most direct words and... expression. Whereas rhetoric provides ...technical devices to help ...prevail upon ...minds ...(regardless of the rhetorician's... opinion...)

Parrhesia is ordinarily translated into English by "free speech"... the parrhesiastes is the one who uses parrhesia, i.e., the one who speaks the truth.

My intention was not to deal with the problem of truth, but with the problem of the truth-teller, or of truth telling... Who is able to tell the truth, about what, with what consequences, and with what relations to power. ...With the question of the importance of telling the truth, knowing who is able to tell the truth, and knowing why we should tell the truth, we have the roots of what we could call the 'critical' tradition in the West.

I don't really know what they mean by "intellectuals," all the people who describe, denounce, or scold them. I do know, on the other hand, what I have committed myself to, as an intellectual, which is to say, after all, a cerebro-spinal individual: to having a brain as supple as possible and a spinal column that's as straight as necessary.

The political, ethical, social, philosophical problem of our day is not to try to liberate the individual from the state and from the state's institutions but to liberate us both from the state and from the type of individualization which is linked to the state. We have to promote new forms of subjectivity through the refusal of this kind of individuality which has been imposed on us for several centuries.

Maybe the target nowadays is not to discover what we are but to refuse what we are.