Merleau-Ponty, Maurice

"The ambiguity of existence is the source of both tragedy and hope."

"The visible world is the manifestation of our engagement with being."

"Meaning is not transmitted but negotiated between consciousnesses."

"The past is not dead; it is sedimented in our present existence."

"To be human is to be perpetually open to new meaning."

"The work of art is a statement of human freedom and possibility."

"Existence precedes and conditions all essence."

"The dialogue with the world is never finished."

"Our freedom is always situated within a context that both constrains and enables it."

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

"Consciousness is being-toward-the-thing by the intermediary of the body."

"The most important thing is to see what is before your eyes."

"Speech is a kind of action."

"The perception of the world is the world itself."

"Freedom is the only source of meaning."

"The body is our general medium for having a world."

"To live is to be aware of oneself as incomplete."

"Ambiguity is the essential structure of human existence."

"The artist's vision is not of a world of separated things, but of a world of relations."

"Understanding is a modification of ourselves."

"Being is, and nothingness is not."

"The world is already constituted, not created by consciousness."

"We must recognize that the body itself is a world."

"Meaning is born at the intersection of consciousness and the world."

"The essence of human experience is embodied."

"Perception is not a passivity but a kind of activity."

"The lived body is the ground of all experience."

"Time is not a series of moments but a living present."

"We are condemned to be free; we cannot escape responsibility."

"The world appears to us through our engagement with it."