Maurice Merleau-Ponty Quotes

Quotes about:

• We know not through our intellect but through our experience.

  Maurice Merleau-Ponty

  Intellect, Knows

  103 Copy quote

• The body is our general medium for having a world.

  Maurice Merleau-Ponty

  Phenomenology, World, Body

  Maurice Merleau-Ponty (2002). “Phenomenology of Perception”, p.169, Psychology Press

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• To understand is to experience harmony between what we aim at and what is given, between the intention and the performance - and the body is our anchorage in the world.

  Maurice Merleau-Ponty

  Understanding, World, Body

  Maurice Merleau-Ponty (2002). “Phenomenology of Perception”, p.167, Psychology Press

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• The body is to be compared, not to a physical object, but rather to a work of art.

  Maurice Merleau-Ponty

  Art, Philosophy, Medicine

  Maurice Merleau-Ponty (2002). “Phenomenology of Perception”, p.174, Routledge

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• We should be sensitive to the thread of silence from which the tissue of speech is woven.

  Maurice Merleau-Ponty

  Silence, Woven, Tissues

  Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1973). “The Prose of the World”, p.46, Northwestern University Press

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• 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-Ponty

  Moving, Hands, Space

  Maurice Merleau-Ponty, James M. Edie (1964). “The Primacy of Perception: And Other Essays on Phenomenological Psychology, the Philosophy of Art, History and Politics”, p.5, Northwestern University Press

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

  Maurice Merleau-Ponty

  Expression, Empathy, Feels

  Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Ted Toadvine (2007). “The Merleau-Ponty Reader”, p.174, Northwestern University Press

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• I will never know how you see red and you will never know how I see it. But this separation of consciousness is recognized only after a failure of communication, and our first movement is to believe in an undivided being between us.

  Maurice Merleau-Ponty

  Believe, Communication, Movement

  Maurice Merleau-Ponty, James M. Edie (1964). “The Primacy of Perception: And Other Essays on Phenomenological Psychology, the Philosophy of Art, History and Politics”, p.17, Northwestern University Press

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• Everyone is alone and yet nobody can do without other people, not just because they are useful... but also when it comes to happiness.

  Maurice Merleau-Ponty

  People, Can Do

  Maurice Merleau-Ponty (2004). “The World of Perception”, p.87, Routledge

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• Our own body is in the world as the heart is in the organism: it keeps the visible spectacle constantly alive, it breathes life into it and sustains it inwardly, and with it forms a system.

  Maurice Merleau-Ponty

  Heart, Alive, World

  Maurice Merleau-Ponty (2002). “Phenomenology of Perception”, p.235, Psychology Press

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• My own words take me by surprise and teach me what to think.

  Maurice Merleau-Ponty

  Thinking, Surprise, Teach

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• I am not in front of my body, I am in it or rather I am it... If we can still speak of interpretation in relation to the perception of one's own body, we shall have to say that it interprets itself.

  Maurice Merleau-Ponty

  Perception, Body, Speak

  Maurice Merleau-Ponty (2002). “Phenomenology of Perception”, p.173, Routledge

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• We must therefore rediscover, after the natural world, the social world, not as an object or sum of objects, but as a permanent field or dimension of existence.

  Maurice Merleau-Ponty

  Phenomenology, World, Fields

  Maurice Merleau-Ponty (2002). “Phenomenology of Perception”, p.421, Psychology Press

  78 Copy quote

• The flesh is at the heart of the world.

  Maurice Merleau-Ponty

  Heart, World, Flesh

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• To ask for an explanation is to explain the obscure by the more obscure.

  Maurice Merleau-Ponty

  Obscure, Explanation, Asks

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• 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.

  Maurice Merleau-Ponty

  Names, Say Anything, Phenomenology

  Maurice Merleau-Ponty (2002). “Phenomenology of Perception”, p.22, Routledge

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• Visible and mobile, my body is a thing among things; it's caught in the fabric of the world, and its cohesion is that of a thing. But, because it moves itself and sees, it holds things in a circle around itself.

  Maurice Merleau-Ponty

  Moving, Circles, Fabric

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• The world is... the natural setting of, and field for, all my thoughts and all my explicit perceptions. Truth does not inhabit only the inner man, or more accurately, there is no inner man, man is in the world, and only in the world does he know himself.

  Maurice Merleau-Ponty

  Men, Perception, Doe

  Maurice Merleau-Ponty (2002). “Phenomenology of Perception”, p.12, Psychology Press

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• The phenomenological world is not the bringing to explicit expression of a pre-existing being, but the laying down of being. Philosophy is not the reflection of a pre-existing truth, but, like art, the act of bringing truth into being.

  Maurice Merleau-Ponty

  Art, Philosophy, Reflection

  Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1962). “Phenomenology of Perception”, p.19, Psychology Press

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• The photograph keeps open the instants which the onrush of time closes up forthwith; it destroys the overtaking, the overlapping, the metamorphosis of time.

  Maurice Merleau-Ponty

  Metamorphosis, Photograph, Overtaking

  Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Galen A. Johnson, Michael B. Smith (1993). “The Merleau-Ponty Aesthetics Reader: Philosophy and Painting”, p.145, Northwestern University Press

  50 Copy quote

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

  Maurice Merleau-Ponty

  May, Language, Speak

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• Socrates reminds us that it is not the same thing, but almost the opposite, to understand religion and to accept it.

  Maurice Merleau-Ponty

  Opposites, Accepting

  Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1988). “In Praise of Philosophy and Other Essays”, p.45, Northwestern University Press

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• Nothing determines me from outside, not because nothing acts upon me, but, on the contrary, because I am from the start outside myself and open to the world.

  Maurice Merleau-Ponty

  World, Determine, Contrary

  Maurice Merleau-Ponty (2002). “Phenomenology of Perception”, p.530, Psychology Press

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• I discover vision, not as a 'thinking about seeing,' to use Descartes expression, but as a gaze at grips with a visible world, and that is why for me there can be another's gaze.

  Maurice Merleau-Ponty

  Thinking, Expression, Vision

  Maurice Merleau-Ponty (2002). “Phenomenology of Perception”, p.409, Psychology Press

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• Language transcends us and yet we speak.

  Maurice Merleau-Ponty

  Phenomenology, Language, Speak

  Maurice Merleau-Ponty (2002). “Phenomenology of Perception”, p.456, Routledge

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