Because we are in the world, we are condemned to meaning, and we cannot do or say anything without its acquiring a name in history.

Our view of man will remain superficial so long as we fail to go back to that origin [of silence], so long as we fail to find, beneath the chatter of words, the primordial silence, and as long as we do not describe the action which breaks this silence. the spoken word is a gesture, and its meaning, a world.

True reflection presents me to myself not as idle and inaccessible subjectivity, but as identical with my presence in the world and to others, as I am now realizing it: I am all that I see, I am an intersubjective field, not despite my body and historical situation, but, on the contrary, by being this body and this situation, and through them, all the rest.

We know not through our intellect but through our experience.

I live in the facial expressions of the other, as I feel him living in mine.

I may speak many languages, but there remains one in which I live.

Language transcends us and yet we speak.