1001Philosophers

Maurice Merleau-Ponty Quotes on Mind

Maurice Merleau-Ponty was a 20th-century French phenomenologist and one of the most original philosophers of the post-war French tradition. This page collects quotes attributed to Maurice Merleau-Ponty on the topic of mind, drawn from across the philosopher's works.

Quotes

  • Attributed to Maurice Merleau-Ponty:

    “Because we are in the world, we are condemned to meaning.”

  • Attributed to Maurice Merleau-Ponty:

    “The body is the vehicle of being in the world.”

  • Attributed to Maurice Merleau-Ponty:

    “Truth does not inhabit only the inner man, or rather there is no inner man, man is in the world, and only in the world does he know himself.”

  • Attributed to Maurice Merleau-Ponty:

    “The world is not what I think, but what I live through.”

  • Attributed to Maurice Merleau-Ponty:

    “Perception is not a science of the world, it is not even an act, a deliberate taking up of a position; it is the background from which all acts stand out.”

  • Attributed to Maurice Merleau-Ponty:

    “It is by lending his body to the world that the artist changes the world into paintings.”

  • Attributed to Maurice Merleau-Ponty:

    “The phenomenological world is not pure being, but the sense which is revealed where the paths of my various experiences intersect.”