Quotes About Philosophy

Among the most ancient Greek thinkers, it is Heraclitus who was subjected to the most fundamentally un-Greek misinterpretation in the course of Western history, and who nevertheless in more recent times has provided the strongest impulses toward redisclosing what is authentically Greek.

La conciencia habla única y constantemente en la modalidad del silencio. (§ 56)

Es kann sein, daß wir eines Tages aus unserer Alltäglichkeit herausrücken und in die Macht der Dichtung einrücken müssen, daß wir nie mehr so in die Alltäglichkeit zurückkehren, wie wir sie verlassen haben.

On ne peut entreprendre de définir l'être sans tomber dans cette absurdité: car on ne peut définir un mot sans commencer par celui-ci, c'est, soit qu'on l'exprime ou qu'on le sous-entende. Donc pour définir l'être, il faudrait dire c'est, et ainsi employer le mot défini dans sa définition.

En tanto el tiempo es en cada caso mío, existen muchos tiempos. El tiempo carece de sentido; el tiempo es temporal

To say philosophy originates in wonder means philosophy is wondrous in its essence and becomes more wondrous the more it becomes what it really is.

Man obviously is a being. As such he belongs to the totality of Being—just like the stone, the tree, or the eagle. But man's distinctive feature lies in this, that he, as the being who thinks, is open to Being, face to face with Being; thus man remains referred to Being and so answers to it. Man is essentially this relationship of responding to Being, and he is only this.

Questioning is the piety of thought

Das Dasein ist je in seinem faktischen Sein wie und 'was' es schon war. Ob ausdrücklich oder nicht, ist es seine Vergangenheit.

The god wholly other than past ones and especially other than the Christian one.

Folks whose noses will still smell the day after tomorrow, and who still have on their tongues the day before yesterday, behave like ones who had known and configured the "new actuality.

If I may answer briefly, and perhaps clumsily, but after long reflection: philosophy will be unable to effect any immediate change in the current state of the world. This is true not only of philosophy but of all purely human reflection and endeavor. Only a god can save us.

The question of existence never gets straightened out except through existing itself.

How many Germans live who speak their mother tongue effortlessly and yet are unable to understand Kant's Critique of Pure Reason or one of Hölderlin's hymns! Hence whoever has mastered the Greek language, or has some acquaintance with it by accident or choice, possess not the least proof thereby that he is able to think according to the thought of a Greek thinker.

But anyone who only expects thinking to give assurances, and awaits the day when we can go beyond it as unnecessary, is demanding that thought annihilate itself.

The truth of beyng is the beyng of truth—said in this way, it sounds like an artificial and forced reversal and, at most, like a seduction to a dialectical game. In fact, this reversal is merely a fleeting and external sign of the turning which essentially occurs in beyng itself and which casts light on what might be meant here by "decision.

What is decision anyway?

Certainly, dialectic is a magnificent thing. But one never finds the dialectic, as if it were a mill which exists somewhere and into which one empties whatever one chooses, or whose mechanism one could modify according to taste and need.

Overman is the man who grounds Being anew-in the rigor of knowledge and in the grand style of creation.

Für die Götter kommen wir zu spät und zu früh für das Seyn.

As ek-sisting, man sustains Da-sein in that he takes the Da, the clearing of Being, into care.

Being is essentially different from a being, from beings.

Poetically dwells man upon this earth.

Language is the house of Being. In its home man dwells.