Philosophy Quotes

"The true object of philosophy is to learn how to live well and virtuously."

"Ethics is the science of what is best for human beings."

"The Other is not something that can be known or possessed, but rather encountered in ethical responsibility."

"We are condemned to ethics by the very structure of our existence."

"The trace of the Other marks us before we mark ourselves."

"The infinite desire cannot be satisfied by any object in the world."

"Ethics precedes ontology; obligation precedes being."

"Proximity is not spatial but ethical and infinite."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"The self cannot be sovereign when truly facing the Other."

"The Other's question of me is more fundamental than my question of them."

"Suffering teaches us the infinite nature of obligation."

"The trace indicates what has passed beyond being."

"The ethical relation cannot be universalized without betraying itself."

"Indifference to the Other's suffering is complicity in violence."

"The self is a hostage to the Other, and this is our dignity."

"Ethics is the response to being chosen without having chosen."

"The Other cannot be totalized into a system of comprehension."

"Consciousness is always consciousness of something, but ethics is consciousness of Someone."

"We must speak of what we cannot speak, think of what eludes thought."

"The ethical is not a region of being but the very meaning of meaning."

"Being is contingent, finite, and dependent upon alterity."

"The ethical command is silent yet impossibly loud."

"To be is to be responsible before any choice of responsibility."