Paul Ricoeur

“Memory is the matrix of history.”

“The symbol gives rise to thought.”

“To explain more is to understand better.”

“There is no self-understanding that is not mediated by signs, symbols, and texts.”

“The aim of hermeneutics is to make of the text a new event of discourse.”

“Hermeneutics is the theory of the operations of understanding in their relation to the interpretation of texts.”

“The capacity for telling ourselves stories is a basic condition of our existence.”

“The other is not an object of my knowledge but the subject of a dialogue.”

“The wager of interpretation is that we can bet on the meaning of a text, and that the meaning can be validated.”

“Forgiveness is the final intention of the will.”

“Narrative is the guardian of time.”

“The fragility of the human condition is not a fault to be corrected but a condition to be embraced.”

“The self is not a given, but a task to be accomplished.”

“Justice is the first virtue of social institutions, as truth is of systems of thought.”

“To be is to be capable of telling a story.”

“The past is not a given but a task.”

“A text is a world that I can inhabit.”

“Ideology is a necessary function of social life; it is the way a group represents its own existence.”

“The capacity to be wounded is the price of existence.”

“Man is this plural and collective unity in which the unity of destination and the differences of destinies are to be understood through each other.”