Top 35 Jürgen Habermas Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “The only knowledge that can truly orient action is knowledge that frees itself from mere human interests and is based in Ideas in other words knowledge that has taken a theoretical attitude.”

— Jürgen Habermas

2. “I shall develop the thesis that anyone acting communicatively must, in performing any speech act, raise universal validity claims and suppose that they can be vindicated.”

— Jürgen Habermas

3. “Positivism stands or falls with the principle of scientism, that is that the meaning of knowledge is defined by what the sciences do and can thus be adequately explicated through the methodological analysis of scientific procedures.”

— Jürgen Habermas

4. “Reaching and understanding is the process of bringing about an agreement on the presupposed basis of validity claims that are mutually recognized.”

— Jürgen Habermas

5. “Science can only be comprehended epistemologically, which means as one category of possible knowledge, as long as knowledge is not equated either effusively with the absolute knowledge of a great philosophy or blindly with scientistic self-understanding of the actual business of research.”

— Jürgen Habermas

6. “Disappointment over nationalistic authoritarian regimes may have contributed to the fact that today religion offers a new and subjectively more convincing language for old political orientations.”

— Jürgen Habermas

7. “Perhaps at a later point important developments will be traced back to September 11. But for now we do not know which of the many scenarios will actually hold in the future.”

— Jürgen Habermas

8. “The difference between political terror and ordinary crime becomes clear during the change of regimes, in which former terrorists become well-regarded representatives of their country.”

— Jürgen Habermas

9. “Global terrorism is extreme both in its lack of realistic goals and in its cynical exploitation of the vulnerability of complex systems.”

— Jürgen Habermas

10. “Philosophy’s position with regard to science, which at one time could be designated with the name “theory of knowledge,” has been undermined by the movement of philosophical thought itself. Philosophy was dislodged from this position by philosophy.”

— Jürgen Habermas

11. “Each murder is one too many.”

— Jürgen Habermas

12. “From a moral point of view, there is no excuse for terrorist acts, regardless of the motive or the situation under which they are carried out.”

— Jürgen Habermas

13. “The interpretation of a case is corroborated only by the successful continuation of a self-formative process, that is by the completion of self-reflection, and not in any unmistakable way by what the patient says or how he behaves.”

— Jürgen Habermas

14. “One never really knows who one’s enemy is.”

— Jürgen Habermas

15. “Historically, terrorism falls in a category different from crimes that concern a criminal court judge.”

— Jürgen Habermas

16. “Today’s Islamic fundamentalism is also a cover for political motifs. We should not overlook the political motifs we encounter in forms of religious fanaticism.”

— Jürgen Habermas

17. “The task of universal pragmatics is to identify and reconstruct universal conditions of possible mutual understanding.”

— Jürgen Habermas

18. “The state is in danger of falling into disrepute due to the evidence of its inadequate resources.”

— Jürgen Habermas

19. “Only by externalization, by entering into social relationships, can we develop the interiority of our own person.”

— Jürgen Habermas

20. “The uncertainty of the danger belongs to the essence of terrorism.”

— Jürgen Habermas

21. “Since our complex societies are highly susceptible to interferences and accidents, they certainly offer ideal opportunities for a prompt disruption of normal activities.”

— Jürgen Habermas

22. “If the September 11 terror attack is supposed to constitute a caesura in world history, it must be able to stand comparison to other events of world historical impact.”

— Jürgen Habermas

23. “Partisans fight on familiar territory with professed political objectives to conquer power. This is what distinguishes them from terrorists.”

— Jürgen Habermas

24. “Since the intervention in Afghanistan, we suddenly began to notice when, in political discussions, we found ourselves only among Europeans or Israelis.”

— Jürgen Habermas

25. “What was new was the symbolic force of the targets struck. The attackers did not just physically cause the highest buildings in Manhattan to collapse; they also destroyed an icon in the household imagery of the American nation.”

— Jürgen Habermas

26. “I take as my fundamental starting point the fundamental distinction between work and interaction.”

— Jürgen Habermas

27. “The scenarios of biological or chemical warfare painted in detail by the American media during the months after September 11 only betray the inability of the government to determine the magnitude of the danger.”

— Jürgen Habermas

28. “Instead of the international police action we had hoped for during the war in Kosovo, there are wars again – conducted with state-of-the-art technology, but still in the old style.”

— Jürgen Habermas

29. “Perhaps September 11 could be called the first historic world event in the strictest sense: the impact, the explosion, the slow collapse – a gruesome reality literally took place in front of a global public.”

— Jürgen Habermas

30. “A threatened nation can react to uncertain dangers solely through administrative channels, to the truly embarrassing situation of perhaps overreacting.”

— Jürgen Habermas

31. “I consider Bush’s decision to call for a war against terrorism a serious mistake. He is elevating these criminals to the status of war enemies, and one cannot lead a war against a network if the term war is to retain any definite meaning.”

— Jürgen Habermas

32. “After September 11, the European governments have completely failed. They are incapable of seeing beyond their own national scope of interests.”

— Jürgen Habermas

33. “Some of those drawn into the holy war had been secular nationalists only a few years before. If one looks at the biographies of these people, remarkable continuities are revealed.”

— Jürgen Habermas

34. “I cannot imagine a context that would some day, in some manner, make the monstrous crime of September 11 an understandable or comprehensible political act.”

— Jürgen Habermas

35. “Osama bin Laden, the person, more likely serves the function of a stand-in. Compare the new terrorists with partisans or conventional terrorists in Israel. These people often fight in a decentralized manner in small, autonomous units, too.”

— Jürgen Habermas