The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays Quotes

“...then he comes to the brink of a precipitous fall; that is, he comes to the point where he himself will have to be taken as standing-reserve. Meanwhile man, precisely as the one so threatened, exalts himself to the posture of lord of the earth. In this way the impression comes to prevail that everything man encounters exists only insofar as it is his construct. This illusion gives rise in turn to one final delusion: It seems as though man everywhere and always encounters only himself... In truth, however, precisely nowhere does man today any longer encounter himself, i.e. his essence. Man stands so decisively in attendance on the challenging-forth of Enframing that he does not apprehend Enframing as a claim, that he fails to see himself as the one spoken to, and hence also fails in every way to hear in what respect he ek-sists, from out of his essence, in the realm of an exhortation or address, and thus can never encounter only himself.”
― Martin Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays

“Questioning is the piety of thought”
― Martin Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays

“Technology is a mode of revealing. Technology comes to presence in the realm where revealing and unconcealment take place, where aletheia, truth, happens.”
― Martin Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays

“But what help is it to us to look into the constellation of truth? We look into the danger and see the growth of the saving power.
Through this we are not yet saved. But we are thereupon summoned to hope in the growing light of the saving power. How can this happen? Here and now and in little things, that we may foster the saving power in its increase. This includes holding always before our eyes the extreme danger.”
― Martin Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays

“The thinker only responded to what addressed itself to him.”
― Martin Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays

“Technology is therefore no mere means. Technology is a way of revealing […], i.e., of truth.”
― Martin Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays

“Wherever the concealment of beings as a whole is conceded only as a limit that
occasionally announces itself, concealing as a fundamental occurrence has sunk into
forgottenness.”
― Martin Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays

“Who accomplishes the challenging setting-upon through which what we call the real is revealed as standing-reserve? Obviously, man. To what extent is man capable of such a revealing? Man can indeed conceive, fashion, and carry through this or that in one way or another. But man does not have control over unconcealment itself, in which at any given time the real shows itself or withdraws. The fact that the real has been showing itself in the light of Ideas ever since the time of Plato, Plato did not bring about. The thinker only responded to what addressed itself to him.”
― Martin Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays