Martin Heidegger Quotes

If you can not master your language you must be it's slave.

We tend to look through language and not realize how much power language has.

I think with all my books, language has been their subject as much as anything else. Language can elide or displace or sideline whole groups of people. You can't necessarily change the way language is used, but if it becomes something you're conscious of... that gives you a certain power over it.

The attitude of independence toward a constructed language which all national speakers must adopt is really a great advantage, because it tends to make man see himself as the master of language instead of its obedient servant.

He who allows me to rule is in fact my master.

I master only the language of others. Mine does with me what it wants.

Every organism, every human being, must conquer or serve.

Men of today seem to feel more acutely than ever the paradox of their condition. They know themselves to be the supreme end to which all action should be subordinated, but the exigencies of action force them to treat one another as instruments or obstacles, as means. The more widespread their mastery of the world, the more they find themselves crushed by uncontrollable forces.

...only mastery and sovereignty bring glory, and only slavery brings shame.

To govern men, you must either excel them in their accomplishments, or despise them.

I like to be controlled, but that doesn't mean controlled like a dog.

It is a general truth that students of language in every era try to colonize some or all of the other human sciences.

When human beings say they have power, it always makes me laugh a little bit.

It is a novel kind of supremacy, the best that life can offer, to have as servants by skill those who by nature are our masters.

Mastery of language affords remarkable power.

Grammar, which can govern even Kings.

But, to protect men, we must have the power of controlling them. We must first enslave them before we can protect them.

We often speak of love when we really should be speaking of the drive to dominate or to master, so as to confirm ourselves as active agents, in control of our own destinies and worthy of respect from others.

To model an object is to possess it.

The man who speaks to you of sacrifice, speaks of slaves and masters. And intends to be the master.

Power floats like money, like language, like theory.

Nihilism is a natural consequence of a culture (or civilization) ruled and regulated by categories that mask manipulation, mastery and domination of peoples and nature.

The master is a slave when he fears those whom he rules.

The mother tongue is propaganda.

Intercourse is an assertion of mastery, one that announces his own higher caste and proves it upon a victim who is expected to surrender, serve, and be satisfied.