Our body is not in space like things; it inhabits or haunts space. It applies itself to space like a hand to an instrument. And when we wish to move about, we do not move the body as we move an object.
Maurice Merleau-PontyBecause we are in the world, we are condemned to meaning, and we cannot do or say anything without its acquiring a name in history.
Maurice Merleau-PontyThe number and richness of man's signifiers always surpasses the set of defined objects that could be termed signifieds. The symbolic function must always precede its object and does not encounter reality except when it precedes it into the imaginary.
Maurice Merleau-PontyThe body is to be compared, not to a physical object, but rather to a work of art.
Maurice Merleau-PontyTrue 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.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty