Conflicts may be the sources of defeat, lost life and a limitation of our potentiality but they may also lead to greater depth of living and the birth of more far-reaching unities, which flourish in the tensions that engender them.

As a universal history of philosophy, the history of philosophy must become one great unity.

The Socratic teacher turns his students away from himself and back onto themselves; he hides in paradoxes, makes himself inaccessible. The intimate relationship between student and teacher here is not one of submission, but of a contest for truth.

To decide to become a philosopher seemed as foolish to me as to decide to become a poet.

At the present moment, the security of coherent philosophy, which existed from Parmenides to Hegel, is lost.

What makes us afraid is our great freedom in the face of the emptiness that has still to be filled.

Greatness of mind becomes an object of love only when the power at work in it itself has a noble character