Top 21 Quotes by Hans Jonas

The simple truth of our finiteness is that we could, by whatever means, go on interminably only at the price of either losing the past and, therewith, our identity, or living only in the past and therefore without a real present. We cannot seriously wish either and thus not a physical enduring at that price.

Responsibility has become the fundamental imperative in modern civilization, and it should be an unavoidable criterion to assess and evaluate human actions, including, in a special way, development activities.

It was once religion which told us that we are all sinners because of original sin. It is now the ecology of our planet which pronounces us all to be sinners because of the excessive exploits of human inventiveness.

Unlike the interference of ordinary interest, power, or prejudice, which touches philosophy only at its outskirts and becomes at most a matter for philosophical tactics, the claim of revelation to the highest truth touches philosophy at its core and must affect its whole strategy.