248 Quotes by Martin Heidegger

In no way can it be uttered, as can other things, which one can learn. Rather, from out of a full, co-existential dwelling with the thing itself – as when a spark, leaping from the fire, flares into light – so it happens, suddenly, in the soul, there to grow, alone with itself.

From our human experience and history, at least as far as I am informed, I know that everything essential and great has only emerged when human beings had a home and were rooted in a tradition. Today’s literature is, for instance, largely destructive.

Nietzsche did track down Platonism in its most covert form: Christianity and its secularizations are thoroughly “Platonism for the people”.

If in Nietzsche’s thinking the prior tradition of Western thought is gathered and completed in a decisive respect, then the confrontation with Nietzsche becomes one with all Western thought hitherto.

The greatest nearness of the last god eventuates when the event, as the hesitant self-withholding, is elevated into refusal. The latter is essentially other than sheer absence. Refusal, as belonging to the event, can be experienced only on the basis of the more originary essence of beyng as lit up in the thinking.

Man obviously is a being. As such he belongs to the totality of Being – just like the stone, the tree, or the eagle. But man’s distinctive feature lies in this, that he, as the being who thinks, is open to Being, face to face with Being; thus man remains referred to Being and so answers to it. Man is essentially this relationship of responding to Being, and he is only this.

To give oneself the law is the highest freedom. The much-lauded ‘academic freedom’ will be expelled from the German university; for this freedom was not genuine because it was only negative. It primarily meant lack of concern, arbitrariness of intentions and inclinations, lack of restraint in what was done and left undone. The concept of the freedom of the German student is now brought back to its truth. Henceforth, the bond and service of German students will unfold from this truth.

Only if we are capable of dwelling, only then can we build.

Das Nichts nichtet.