“One must be something in order to do something.”

“It is a principle of diplomacy that one must know something of the truth in order to lie convincingly.”

“We must be something in order to do something, but we must also do something in order to be something. The best rule, I think, is this: If we find it hard to do good, then let us try to be good. If, on the other hand, we find it hard to be good, then let us try to do good. Being leads to doing, doing leads to being. Yet below both as their common root is faith, — faith in God, in man, in ourselves, in the eternal superiority of right over wrong, truth over error, good over evil, love over all selfishness and all sin.”

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

“Mother always said that if one must do something unpleasant, one should do it wholeheartedly and not waste effort on regret.”

“I go to the typical state school and try to infiltrate it. Yes!... One can do something in the institutions in trying to infiltrate them, and outside one can do something to set a model in place... One must work with divers methods anyway. One must always carry on with what is possible.”

“In order to know men, something must be chanced. Who risks himself of nothing knows nothing.”

“Beauty was not simply something to behold; it was something one could do.”

“If everything you do is in order to do something else, when do you ever get to the end of it all?”

“Every work of art must retain something from the first days of creation, something of the smell of earth, or one could even say: something animate.”