History does not belong to us; we belong to it.

All cities we have visited are precincts in this metropolis of the mind.

Nothing exists except through language.

For both art and the historical sciences are ways of experiencing in which our own understanding of existence is immediately brought into play.

The more language is a living operation, the less we are aware of it. Thus it follows from the self-forgetfulness of language that its real being consists in what is said in it.

We cannot understand without wanting to understand, that is, without wanting to let something be said...Understanding does not occur when we try to intercept what someone wants to say to us by claiming we already know it.

Long before we understand ourselves through the process of self-examination, we understand ourselves in a self-evident way in the family, society and state in which we live.