248 Quotes by Martin Heidegger

The small are always dependent on the great; they are “small” precisely because they think they are independent. The great thinker is one who can hear what is greatest in the work of other “greats” and who can transform it in an original manner.

Der Mensch versucht vergeblich, durch sein Planen den Erdball in eine Ordnung zu bringen, wenn er nicht dem Zuspruch des Feldweges eingeordnet ist.

Technology is a mode of revealing. Technology comes to presence in the realm where revealing and unconcealment take place, where aletheia, truth, happens.

Every questioning is a seeking. Every seeking takes its direction beforehand from what is sought. Questioning is a knowing search for beings in their thatness and whatness.

In Nietzsche’s view nihilism is not a Weltanschauung that occurs at some time and place or another; it is rather the basic character of what happens in Occidental history.

What is decision anyway?

But “nowhere” does not mean nothing; rather, region in general lies therein, and disclosedness of the world in general for essentially spatial being-in. Therefore, what is threatening cannot come closer from a definite direction within nearness, it is already “there” – and yet nowhere. It is so near that it is oppressive and takes one’s breath – and yet it is nowhere.

The idolizers of “facts” never realize that their idols shine only in a borrowed light. They are indeed not supposed to realize that, for it would immediately make them perplexed and, accordingly, useless. But idolizers and idols are used only when the gods are absconding and so are announcing their nearness.

The world, in resting upon the earth, strives to surmount it. As self-opening it cannot endure anything closed. The earth, however, as sheltering and concealing, tends always to draw the world into itself and keep it there.