All Maurice Merleau-Ponty Quotes
- True reflection presents me to myself not as idle and inaccessible subjectivity, but as identical with my presence in the world and to others, as… All
- The flesh is at the heart of the world. Flesh
- The phenomenological world is not the bringing to explicit expression of a pre-existing being, but the laying down of being. Philosophy is not the reflection… Act
- The perceived world is the always-presupposed foundation of all rationality, all value, and all existence. All
- I will never know how you see red and you will never know how I see it. But this separation of consciousness is recognized only… Believe
- To ask for an explanation is to explain the obscure by the more obscure. Ask
- Speech is not a means in the service of an external end. It contains its own rule of usage, ethics, and view of the world,… Bears
- It is the mission of the twentieth century to elucidate the irrational. Century
- Machiavelli is the complete contrary of a machiavellian, since he describes the tricks of power and gives the whole show away. The seducer and the… Best
- Existence permeates sexuality and vice versa, so that it is impossible to determine, in a given decision or action, the proportion of sexual to other… Act
- I live in the facial expressions of the other, as I feel him living in mine. Empathy
- The number and richness of man's signifiers always surpasses the set of defined objects that could be termed signifieds. The symbolic function must always precede… Always Precede
- Our body is not in space like things; it inhabits or haunts space. It applies itself to space like a hand to an instrument. And… Applies
- Our own body is in the world as the heart is in the organism: it keeps the visible spectacle constantly alive, it breathes life into… Alive
- The body is to be compared, not to a physical object, but rather to a work of art. Art
- Everyone is alone and yet nobody can do without other people, not just because they are useful... but also when it comes to happiness. Alone
- The child lives in a world which he unhesitatingly believes accessible to all around him. Accessible
- As a matter of principle, humanity is precarious: each person can only believe what he recognizes to be true internally and, at the same time,… Believe
- The full meaning of a language is never translatable into another. We may speak several languages but one of them always remains the one in… Always Remains
- I am not in front of my body, I am in it or rather I am it... If we can still speak of interpretation in… Body
- The world is... the natural setting of, and field for, all my thoughts and all my explicit perceptions. All
- My hold on the past and the future is precarious and my possession of my own time is always postponed until a stage when I… Bounded
- To understand is to experience harmony between what we aim at and what is given, between the intention and the performance - and the body… Aim
- I discover vision, not as a 'thinking about seeing,' to use Descartes expression, but as a gaze at grips with a visible world, and that… Descartes
- My own words take me by surprise and teach me what to think. Inspirational