Philosophy Quotes

"The soul is the effect and instrument of a political anatomy; the soul is the prison of the body."

"The modern individual is a self that is constructed through discourse and social practice."

"Perhaps we should stop talking about the nature of human sexuality and start asking what humans have made of sexuality."

"Confession is a ritual of discourse in which the speaking subject is also the subject of the statement."

"To be suspicious is to be modern."

"Madness is the absolute break with the work of mourning."

"The body is not something that is given, it is something that is constructed."

"Man is an invention of recent date. And one perhaps nearing its end."

"The subject is not something given in advance."

"Madness is to absolute an Other to reason, an Other that can be come to know only in a moment of madness."

"I like the idea that there are always other forces at work than the ones we imagine we are controlling."

"The more one possesses the more one is possessed."

"The goal of philosophy is to understand how knowledge is made possible."

"Society is a construct, a collective agreement to live in a certain way."

"It would be my contention that the vast majority of people are unconsciously conditioned to be exactly as they are."

"Understanding is not merely a human activity but the very structure of human existence itself."

"To understand is to participate in a conversation that has been going on long before we arrived."

"The question of meaning cannot be separated from the question of being."

"Tradition is not a dead weight but a living force that shapes our understanding."

"We approach understanding not as detached observers but as engaged participants."

"The hermeneutic situation describes our fundamental condition as beings who must always interpret."

"Language is the fundamental mode of human existence, not merely a tool we use."

"Being in the world is fundamentally a matter of interpretation and understanding."

"We cannot know ourselves except through our encounter with otherness."

"The fusion of horizons describes the process by which understanding actually occurs."

"Language speaks us even as we speak language."

"We are always already moving within the circle of understanding and misunderstanding."

"Being itself is revealed through our interpretive engagement with the world."

"Understanding is not achieved through methodological detachment but through engagement."

"Language does not exist independent of those who speak it and are spoken by it."