Martin Heidegger Quotes

Nevertheless, the ultimate business of philosophy is to preserve the force of the most elemental words in which Dasein expresses itself, and to keep the common understanding from levelling them off to that unintelligibility which functions in turn as a source of pseudo-problems.

Every questioning is a seeking. Every seeking takes its direction beforehand from what is sought. Questioning is a knowing search for beings in their thatness and whatness.

Warum ist überhaupt Seiendes und nicht vielmehr Nichts? Das ist die Frage.

Form displays the relation [to beings] itself as the state of original comportment toward beings, the festive state in which the being itself in its essence is celebrated and thus for the first time placed in the open.

Kant speaks of the "thing-in-itself" (Ding an sich) in order to distinguish it from the "thing-for-us" (Ding fur uns), that is, as a "phenomenon." A thing-in-itself is that which is not approachable through experience as are the rocks, plants, and animals. Every thing-for-us is as a thing and also a thing-in-itself, which means that it is recognized absolutely withing the absolute knowledge of God. But not every thing-in-itself is also a thing-for-us: God, for instance, is a thing-in-itself, as Kant uses the word, according to the meaning of Christian theology. p. 5

In everything well known something worthy of thought still lurks.

It is said that "being" is the most universal and the emptiest concept. As such it resists every attempt at definition. Nor does this most universal and thus indefinable concept need any definition. Everybody uses it constantly and also already understands what is meant by it.

Being is only Being for Dasein

The relation of feeling toward art and its bringing-forth can be one of production or one of reception and enjoyment.

What is peddled about nowadays as philosophy, especially that of N.S. [National Socialism], but has nothing to do with the inner truth and greatness of that movement [namely the encounter between global technology and modern humanity] is nothing but fishing in that troubled sea of values and totalities.

The most thought-provoking thing in our thought-provoking time is that we are still not thinking.

The critique of the highest values hitherto does not simply refute them or declare them invalid. It is rather a matter of displaying their origins as impositions which must affirm precisely what ought to be negated by the values established.

The human body is essentially something other than an animal organism.

The will to the “true world” in the sense of Plato and Christianity … is in truth a no-saying to our present world, precisely the one in which art is at home.

...der Wille zur »wahren Welt« im Sinne Platons und des Christentums … ist in Wahrheit ein Neinsagen zu unserer hiesigen Welt, in der gerade die Kunst heimisch ist.