Martin Heidegger Quotes

The now, the here, through which all future plunges into the past.

We live in the present, we dream of the future and we learn eternal truths from the past.

When I pronounce the word Future, the first syllable already belongs to the past. When I pronounce the word Silence, I destroy it.

The mystery lies in the here and now. The mystery is: What is one to do with oneself? As you get older you begin to realize the trick time is playing, and that unless you do something about it, the passage of time is nothing but the encroachment of the horrible banality of the past on the pure future. The past devours the future like a tape recorder, converting pure possibility into banality. The present is the tape head, the mouth of time. Then where is the mystery and why bother kicking through the ashes? Because there is a clue in the past.

We do not say: Being is, time is, but rather: there is Being and there is time.

If the future and the past really exist, where are they?

Past, present and future are not amenities of language. Time unfolds into the seamsof being. It passes through you, making and shaping.

The mind exists in time, in fact the mind is time; it exists in the past and the future. And remember, time consists of only two tenses, the past and the future. The present is not part of time, the present is part of eternity.

The German language speaks Being, while all the others merely speak of Being.

People have reflected on the quality of time ever since they've been writing. I suppose I have thought about and written about the question of living in the present - but it only lasts for an instant, and then everything becomes the past. The future, you know nothing about, except for some anticipations you have.

I have wondered about time all my life.

In Korean, the word 'future' is made up of two parts. The first part means 'not,' and the second means 'to come.' In that sense, 'future' means something that will not come. This is to say the future is now, and our now is us living our future.

The present moment dies every moment to become the past , is reborn every moment into the future. All experience is now. Now never ends.

Deem not life a thing of consequence. For look at the yawning void of the future, and at that other limitless space, the past.

Every man's life lies within the present; for the past is spent and done with, and the future is uncertain.

It's entirely possible that the notion of what is the past, what is the present and what is the future, could change.

Understanding of being is itself a determination of being of Da-sein.

In order to remain silent Da-sein must have something to say.

Man…who lives in three places – in the past, in the present, and in the future – can be unhappy if one of these three is worthless. Religion has even added a fourth – eternity.

There is neither Past nor Future. There is only the Present.

Query: How does the never to be differ from what never was?

In any weather, at any hour of the day or night, I have been anxious to improve the nick of time, and notch it on my stick too; to stand on the meeting of two eternities, the past and future, which is precisely the present moment; to toe that line.

And if you have no past or future which, after all, is all that the present is made of, why then you may as well dispose of the empty shell of present and commit suicide.

The concept of time shuts off eternity.