"We cannot understand without wanting to understand, that is, without wanting to let something be said. It would be an inadmissible abstraction to contend that we must first have achieved a contemporaneousness with the author or the original reader by means of a reconstruction of his historical horizon before we could begin to grasp the meaning of what is said. A kind of anticipation of meaning guides the effort to understand from the very beginning."
Hans-Georg Gadamer

January 1, 1970

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p. 101

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Hans-Georg_Gadamer