Quotes from Martin Heidegger

But every historical statement and legitimization itself moves within a certain relation to history.

For authentic living what is needed is the resolute confrontation of death.

Teaching is more difficult than learning because what teaching calls for is this: to let learn. The real teacher, in fact, lets nothing else be learned than learning. His conduct, therefore, often produces the impression that we properly learn nothing from him, if by "learning" we now suddenly understand merely the procurement of useful information.

Tell me how you read and I'll tell you who you are.

Anyone can achieve their fullest potential, who we are might be predetermined, but the path we follow is always of our own choosing. We should never allow our fears or the expectations of others to set the frontiers of our destiny. Your destiny can't be changed but, it can be challenged. Every man is born as many men and dies as a single one.

If I take death into my life, acknowledge it, and face it squarely, I will free myself from the anxiety of death and the pettiness of life - and only then will I be free to become myself.

Making itself intelligible is suicide for philosophy.

Man acts as though he were the shaper and master of language, while in fact language remains the master of man.

Everyone is the other and no one is himself.

The most thought-provoking thing in our thought-provoking time is that we are still not thinking.

Every man is born as many men and dies as a single one.

Why are there beings at all, instead of Nothing?

Longing is the agony of the nearness of the distant.

Thinking only begins at the point where we have come to know that Reason, glorified for centuries, is the most obstinate adversary of thinking.

The possible ranks higher than the actual.

he who thinks great thoughts often makes great errors

The small are always dependent on the great; they are "small" precisely because they think they are independent. The great thinker is one who can hear what is greatest in the work of other "greats" and who can transform it in an original manner.

truth is that which makes a people certain, clear, and strong.

To think is to confine yourself to a single thought that one day stands still like a star in the world's sky.

To be a poet in a destitute time means: to attend, singing, to the trace of the fugitive gods. This is why the poet in the time of the world's night utters the holy.

Thus "phenomenology" means ???????????? ?? ????????? -- to let that which shows itself be seen from itself in the very way in which it shows itself from itself.

What was Aristotle's life?' Well, the answer lay in a single sentence: 'He was born, he thought, he died.' And all the rest is pure anecdote.

The human being is not the lord of beings, but the shepherd of Being.

only he who already understands can listen