Levinas, Emmanuel

"The other's destitution precedes all ontological questioning."

"Desire is not a lack to be fulfilled; it is an infinite reaching."

"Ethics interrupts the synchrony of being with the diachrony of time."

"The Infinite is not a concept but an experience of being overwhelmed by otherness."

"Modernity failed because it forgot the ethical imperative."

"Language binds me before freeing me; this is the paradox of human existence."

"The widow, the orphan, and the stranger call upon my justice before any law."

"Proximity to the other is not spatial but ethical."

"I am hostage to the other's appeal; this is my humanity."

"The totalizing systems of philosophy conceal the ethical relation they obscure."

"To think is to think otherwise than being."

"Sensibility is vulnerability; it is the exposure to the other's need."

"The infinite cannot appear; it can only be invoked through the other."

"Glory belongs not to me but to the other; this is the secret of ethics."

"Time is not the measure of duration but the deferral of presence."

"The self discovers itself only through its obligation to the other."

"Peace is not the absence of conflict but the covenant of responsibility."

"The other's mortality teaches me my own contingency."

"Friendship is not symmetrical recognition but the asymmetry of caring."

"Justice requires that I never rest in my ethical responsibilities."

"To be myself is to be chosen by the other's vulnerability."

"The face commands me before any conscious decision."

"Meaning arises not from structures but from the encounter with alterity."

"Forgiveness is not the erasure of violence but the overcoming of vengeance."

"The subject's passivity is its deepest activity—answering the other's call."

"Language is not mine; I am claimed by it through the other."

"Rationality without ethics is the violence of totalitarianism."

"The infinite recedes as it approaches; it remains always transcendent."

"My identity is not my possession but my debt to the other."

"Obsession with the other is the highest form of consciousness."