Paul Ricœur quotes

On a cosmic scale, our life is insignificant, yet this brief period when we appear in the world is the time in which all meaningful questions arise. (Paul Ricœur)
If it is true that there is always more than one way of construing a text, it is not true that all interpretations are equal. View quote
Paul Ricœur
The logic of validation allows us to move between the two limits of dogmatism and skepticism. View quote
Paul Ricœur
So long as the New Testament served to decipher the Old, it was taken as an absolute norm. View quote
Paul Ricœur
The moral law commands us to make the highest possible good in a world the final object of all our conduct. View quote
Paul Ricœur
Narrative identity takes part in the story's movement, in the dialectic between order and disorder. View quote
Paul Ricœur
Wisdom finds its literary expression in wisdom literature. View quote
Paul Ricœur
Testimony gives something to be interpreted. View quote
Paul Ricœur
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. View quote
Paul Ricœur
It is always possible to argue against an interpretation, to confront interpretations, to arbitrate between them and to seek for an agreement, even if this agreement remains beyond our reach. View quote
Paul Ricœur
Although there has always been a hermeneutic problem in Christianity, the hermeneutic question today seems to us a new one. (Paul Ricœur)
Myth expresses in terms of the world - that is, of the other world or the second world - the understanding that man has of himself in relation to the foundation and the limit of his existence. View quote
Paul Ricœur
Hope, insofar as it is hope of resurrection, is the living contradiction of what it proceeds from and what is placed under the sign of the Cross and death. View quote
Paul Ricœur
First, it is not unimportant that the legislative texts of the Old Testament are placed in the mouth of Moses and within the narrative framework of the sojourn at Sinai. View quote
Paul Ricœur
Ordinary language carries with it conditions of meaning which it is easy to recognize by classifying the contexts in which the expression is employed in a meaningful manner. View quote
Paul Ricœur
But myth is something else than an explanation of the world, of history, and of destiny. View quote
Paul Ricœur
I find myself only by losing myself. View quote
Paul Ricœur
The text is a limited field of possible constructions. View quote
Paul Ricœur
What must be the nature of the world... if human beings are able to introduce changes into it? View quote
Paul Ricœur
The Law is one aspect of a much more concrete and encompassing relation than the relation between commanding and obeying that characterizes the imperative. View quote
Paul Ricœur
The narrative constructs the identity of the character, what can be called his or her narrative identity, in constructing that of the story told. It is the identity of the story that makes the identity of the character. (Paul Ricœur)
There is no shorter path for joining a neutral existential anthropology, according to philosophy, with the existential decision before God, according to the Bible. View quote
Paul Ricœur
This is perhaps the most profound meaning of the book of Job, the best example of wisdom. View quote
Paul Ricœur
There has always been a hermeneutic problem in Christianity because Christianity proceeds from a proclamation. View quote
Paul Ricœur
If the Resurrection is resurrection from the dead, all hope and freedom are in spite of death. View quote
Paul Ricœur