Levinas, Emmanuel

"Freedom is only meaningful when exercised in responsibility toward the Other."

"The saying is more important than the said in ethical communication."

"Proximity is not spatial but ethical and infinite."

"We are all strangers and sojourners seeking refuge in one another."

"The Other demands my presence before demanding my comprehension."

"History is marked by the crimes we commit against alterity."

"Ethical awakening is the interruption of our comfortable existence."

"Language must be renewed to speak truly of the Other."

"The feminine Other represents a particular mode of alterity."

"God is not an object of knowledge but the very structure of infinity."

"The State must be subordinated to ethical obligation, never the reverse."

"Persecution is the fate of those who truly listen to the Other."

"The past that weighs upon us is not accessible to consciousness alone."

"Being is always already excessive, overflowing all categories."

"The Other's face prohibits me from killing them, yet I may be forced to kill anyway."

"Maternity is the paradigm of ethical exposure and vulnerability."

"Appetite and hunger express our fundamental openness to transcendence."

"The encounter with the Other suspends my egoism without destroying it."

"Hope is the ethical waiting for what cannot be calculated."

"Art breaks the grip of totality and opens us to infinity."

"Sincerity means being open to the infinite claim of the Other."

"The Other's mortality is what makes their alterity absolute."

"To truly listen is to renounce understanding."

"The ethical subject is before the free subject in the order of responsibility."

"Totality is always totalitarian; infinity alone respects alterity."

"The Third party introduces justice into pure ethical relation."

"Being is interrupted by the trace of what exceeds being."

"Caresses express a desire that cannot be satisfied by possession."

"The Other's vulnerability is not weakness but transcendent power."

"We are responsible even for the responsibility of the Other."