"We name time when we say: every thing has its time. This means: everything which actually is, every being comes and goes at the right time and remains for a time during the time allotted to it. Every thing has its time"
About this Quote
The subtext is that beings are not static objects sprinkled across a timeline. They "come and go", they "remain for a time", and that temporary staying-put is not an accident added onto being; it is part of being's structure. Heidegger is pressing his signature claim: existence is temporal through and through. Even the moral-sounding "right time" is doing double duty. It hints at destiny and appropriateness, but Heidegger's "right" is less about cosmic fairness than about intelligibility: a thing is what it is only within the horizon that lets it show up, matter, and then withdraw.
Context matters. This is the later Heidegger, obsessed with how metaphysics turns time into a measurable resource (clock-time, schedule-time) and thereby misses the more primordial temporality that makes any "measurement" possible. The repetition at the end is not redundancy; it's incantation, a return that forces you to hear how much metaphysics rides inside a cliche. He wants you to notice that when we treat time as something we "have", we are already answering, without noticing, the question of what it means to be.
Quote Details
| Topic | Time |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Heidegger, Martin. (2026, January 15). We name time when we say: every thing has its time. This means: everything which actually is, every being comes and goes at the right time and remains for a time during the time allotted to it. Every thing has its time. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/we-name-time-when-we-say-every-thing-has-its-time-17112/
Chicago Style
Heidegger, Martin. "We name time when we say: every thing has its time. This means: everything which actually is, every being comes and goes at the right time and remains for a time during the time allotted to it. Every thing has its time." FixQuotes. January 15, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/we-name-time-when-we-say-every-thing-has-its-time-17112/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"We name time when we say: every thing has its time. This means: everything which actually is, every being comes and goes at the right time and remains for a time during the time allotted to it. Every thing has its time." FixQuotes, 15 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/we-name-time-when-we-say-every-thing-has-its-time-17112/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2026.











