Levinas, Emmanuel

"The ethical relation precedes and escapes the political order."

"To suffer for the other without redemption—this is the meaning of substitution."

"Justice becomes injustice when it forgets the ethical singularity of each face."

"Being itself is justified only through ethical responsibility."

"The other's gaze measures and judges my freedom."

"Desire for the infinite is desire for what will never satisfy me."

"Proximity is the ethical relation that precedes all spatial contiguity."

"The trace of the Infinite cannot be grasped, only followed."

"My subjectivity is constituted by my capacity to be wounded by the other."

"Goodness is not a quality I possess but a responsibility I cannot escape."

"The state emerges from ethical relations but can betray them."

"To speak is to establish an asymmetrical relation with the other."

"Conscience awakens when I hear the silent cry of the other's suffering."

"The past I cannot remember haunts me; this is history."

"Beauty is not aesthetic pleasure but the epiphany of the infinite."

"Power means the ability to respond to the other's powerlessness."

"The feminine is the dimension of alterity that escapes masculine totality."

"Maternity is not biological but the epitome of ethical responsibility."

"The child is my future, not my project."

"Education is the transmission of humanity to the new generation."

"Learning is being transformed by what is other to oneself."

"Art breaks through the totality of being by invoking the infinite."

"Insomnia is the vigilant consciousness that cannot rest in being."

"The self experiences itself as persecuted by the other's exteriority."

"Messianic hope is hope without the promise of historical fulfillment."

"Truth is not correspondence but the unveiling of the other's vulnerability."

"I am responsible even for the violence of the other against me."

"The ethical relation withstands the test of the political order."

"Being is justified through service, not through truth."

"The widow speaks without words; her silence demands my justice."