The focus of subjectivity is a distorting mirror.

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

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

Nothing exists except through language.

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

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.

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.