List of Maurice Merleau-Ponty Quotes

All Thought Of Something Is At The Same Time Self-consciousness [...] At The Root Of All Our Experiences And All Our Reflections, We Find [...] A Being Which Immediately Recognises Itself, [...] And Which Knows Its Own Existence, Not By Observation And As A Given Fact, Nor By Inference From Any Idea Of Itself, But Through Direct Contact With That Existence. Self-consciousness Is The Very Being Of Mind In Action.

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 Its Object And Does Not Encounter Reality Except When It Precedes It Into The Imaginary.

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 May Fully Understand It, Yet This Stage Can Never Be Reached, Since It Would Be One More Moment Bounded By The Horizon Of Its Future, And Requiring In Its Turn, Further Developments In Order To Be Understood.

Thinking Which Displaces, Or Otherwise Defines, The Sacred Has Been Called Atheistic, And That Philosophy Which Does Not Place It Here Or There, Like A Thing, But At The Joining Of Things And Words, Will Always Be Exposed To This Reproach Without Ever Being Touched By It.

The World Is... The Natural Setting Of, And Field For, All My Thoughts And All My Explicit Perceptions.

Thought Without Language, Says Lavelle, Would Not Be A Purer Thought; It Would Be No More Than The Intention To Think. And His Last Book Offers A Theory Of Expressiveness Which Makes Of Expression Not "a Faithful Image Of An Already Realized Interior Being, But The Very Means By Which It Is Realized.

Even Those Who Have Desired To Work Out A Completely Positive Philosophy Have Been Philosophers Only To The Extent That, At The Same Time, They Have Refused The Right To Install Themselves In Absolute Knowledge. They Taught Not This Knowledge, But Its Becoming In Us, Not The Absolute But, At Most, Our Absolute Relation To It, As Kierkegaard Said. What Makes A Philosopher Is The Movement Which Leads Back Without Ceasing From Knowledge To Ignorance, From Ignorance To Knowledge, And A Kind Of Rest In This Movement.

Being Established In My Life, Buttressed By My Thinking Nature, Fastened Down In This Transcendental Field Which Was Opened For Me By My First Perception, And In Which All Absence Is Merely The Obverse Of A Presence, All Silence A Modality Of The Being Of Sound, I Enjoy A Sort Of Ubiquity And Theoretical Eternity, I Feel Destined To Move In A Flow Of Endless Life, Neither The Beginning Nor The End Of Which I Can Experience In Thought, Since It Is My Living Self Who Think Of Them, And Since Thus My Life Always Precedes And Survives Itself.

The Philosopher Will Ask Himself ... If The Criticism We Are Now Suggesting Is Not The Philosophy Which Presses To The Limit That Criticism Of False Gods Which Christianity Has Introduced Into Our History.

Lichtenberg ... Held Something Of The Following Kind: One Should Neither Affirm The Existence Of God Nor Deny It. ... It Is Not That He Wished To Leave Certain Perspectives Open, Nor To Please Everyone. It Is Rather That He Was Identifying Himself, For His Part, With A Consciousness Of Self, Of The World, And Of Others That Was "strange" (the Word Is His) In A Sense Which Is Equally Well Destroyed By The Rival Explanations.

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, As A Gesture Sometimes Bears The Whole Truth About A Man.

[the Sensate Body Possesses] An Art Of Interrogating The Sensible According To Its Own Wishes, An Inspired Exegesis.