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.

It was clear to me that the forms of consciousness of our inherited and acquired historical education - aesthetic consciousness and historical consciousness - presented alienated forms of our true historical being.

The process of translating comprises in its essence the whole secret of human understanding of the world and of social communication.

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.

Unlike seeing, where one can look away, one cannot 'hear away' but must listen ... hearing implies already belonging together in such a manner that one is claimed by what is being said.

The essence of the question is the opening up, and keeping open, of possibilities.