Maurice Merleau-Ponty

"The world is not what I think, but what I live through."

"Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does."

"The most important thing is to see."

"To take up the world in a look."

"Perception is not a science of the world; it is not even an awareness of the world."

"Nothing is more fragile than freedom."

"Art is not representation of the beautiful or ugly world. It is a resumption of things by the human spirit."

"My body is my general medium for having a world."

"The world is not made of matter but of facts and of truths."

"Consciousness is a being such that in its being, its being is in question insofar as this being implies a being other than itself."

"Language is a power of incarnate meaning."

"I am not the outcome or product of chance and meaninglessness, but of meaning."

"The artist picks out arguments which show up the absurdity more clearly in real life itself."

"Truth is nothing like a system."

"One cannot be deeply responsive to the world without being saddened very often."

"Generality and the exchange of ideas by language presuppose that each person's world is permeable to that of others."

"The supreme truth is that the union is eternal."

"Science manipulates things and gives up living in them."

"We see things; we are not just thinking about them."

"History is not the past; it is the story we tell ourselves about the past."

"To see is to have at a distance; to touch is to have at a close range."

"The painter is the man of nature; the poet is the man of culture."

"A painting is an object which requires as much patience, devotion and love as the creation of a new world."

"Being must be experienced as a mystery."

"The world is there, and I am in it."

"To think is to acknowledge a dependence where we are in a dependent position."

"The body itself is a thing, is for itself and must be treated as such."

"Modern technique has become a means of uprooting."

"Meaning is not something which is added to the sensible data afterwards and from the outside."

"The world is precisely my representation."