Levinas, Emmanuel

"Philosophy must be rewritten as a responsibility to the other."

"Language binds me to the other before any statement is made."

"The ethical relation cannot be symmetrical without ceasing to be ethical."

"Totality is the attempt to reduce the other to the same—and it is violence."

"The face commands: thou shalt not commit murder."

"To be human is to be hostage to the other."

"The infinite is not comprehensible but only responsible."

"Justice begins when I recognize my responsibility exceeds my knowledge."

"The other's suffering is my first concern, before my own."

"Desire is the yearning for what cannot be possessed or consumed."

"The ethical subject is one who gives without expecting return."

"Being must be questioned not as an ontological problem but as an ethical one."

"The other's need precedes my right to refuse."

"Transcendence is the breakthrough of the infinite in the finite."

"To be responsible is to be unable to refuse the other."

"The face is the place where alterity reveals itself."

"Justice is not an abstract principle but a lived relation to concrete others."

"The other exceeds every category, every concept, every system."

"Vulnerability is not weakness but the very opening to the other."

"Ethics is the attempt to think what cannot be systematized."

"The stranger demands hospitality that knows no limits."

"Subjectivity is not autonomous but produced through responsibility."

"To know the other is to betray the other's alterity."

"The ethical is the religious without dogma."

"I am accused by the other's nakedness before the world."

"The future is not what comes after but what calls us forward."

"Being guilty is not moral failure but the fundamental ethical situation."

"The other's mortality is the measure of my responsibility."

"Language is a way of saying 'I am here for you.'"

"The ethical is the political only when it has betrayed itself."