Johann Georg Hamann

“Poetry is the mother-tongue of the human race.”

“My whole book is but a single digression.”

“Speak, that I may see thee.”

“God is a writer, not a calculator.”

“To be and to have meaning are the same.”

“The more abstract the truth you want to teach, the more you must seduce the senses to it.”

“A writer who is in a hurry to be understood today or tomorrow runs the danger of being misunderstood the day after tomorrow.”

“With the same weapons that philosophy uses to destroy, it must be destroyed.”

“All of idle speculation is a crime against the truth of our own existence.”

“The senses and passions speak and write only images.”

“Our own existence is the only thing we have to think about.”

“Without language we would have no reason, without reason no religion, and without the three essential parts of our nature, neither mind nor bond of society.”