Levinas, Emmanuel

"Subjectivity is the capacity to be affected by what is infinitely other."

"The trace of transcendence appears in every ethical act."

"Violence begins when I reduce the other to my categories."

"My freedom is not my possession but my exposure to the other's claim."

"Meaning emerges in the rupture between self and other."

"The ethical imperative cannot be legislated; it exceeds all law."

"To exist is to bear witness to what transcends existence."

"The other's need is the first language; all speech emerges from it."

"Eros reveals the infinite within finite embodied existence."

"Justice requires attention to the singular face before universal principles."

"The subject is constituted through its renunciation of totality."

"Hope is the refusal to accept that suffering has the final word."

"The divine appears in the ethical relation, not in sacred spaces."

"To be human is to be claimed by what is infinitely outside myself."