Jacques Derrida Quotes

Quotes about:

• That is what deconstruction is made of: not the mixture but the tension between memory, fidelity, the preservation of something that has been given to us, and, at the same time, heterogeneity, something absolutely new, and a break.

  Jacques Derrida

  Memories, Mixtures, Break

  Jacques Derrida, John D. Caputo (1997). “Deconstruction in a Nutshell: A Conversation with Jacques Derrida”, p.6, Fordham Univ Press

  77 Copy quote

• One often speaks without seeing, without knowing, without meaning what one says.

  Jacques Derrida

  Knowing, Speak, Seeing

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• If I only did what I can do, I wouldn't do anything

  Jacques Derrida

  Can Do, Ifs, I Can

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• I was wondering myself where I am going. So I would answer you by saying, first, that I am trying, precisely, to put myself at a point so that I do not know any longer where I am going.

  Jacques Derrida

  Trying, Answers, Firsts

  129 Copy quote

• If things were simple, word would have gotten around.

  Jacques Derrida

  Simple, Simple Words, Ifs

  Jacques Derrida (1977). “Limited Inc”, p.119, Northwestern University Press

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• Learning to live ought to mean learning to die - to acknowledge, to accept, an absolute mortality - without positive outcome,or resurrection, or redemption, for oneself or for anyone else. That has been the old philosophical injunction since Plato: to be a philosopher is to learn how to die.

  Jacques Derrida

  Plato, Philosophical, Mean

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• The blindness that opens the eye is not the one that darkens vision. Tears and not sight are the essence of the eye.

  Jacques Derrida

  Eye, Sight, Essence

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• There is nothing outside the text

  Jacques Derrida

  Deconstruction

  Of Grammatology pt. 2, sec. 2 (1967)

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  Psychoanalysis has taught that the dead – a dead parent, for example – can be more alive for us, more powerful, more scary, than the living. It is the question of ghosts.

  Jacques Derrida

  Powerful, Parent, Scary

  100 Copy quote

• Monsters cannot be announced. One cannot say: 'Here are our monsters,' without immediately turning the monsters into pets.

  Jacques Derrida

  Creativity, Imagination, Pet

  "Some Statements and Truisms about Neologisms, Newisms, Postisms, Parasitisms, and other small Seismisms", The States of Theory, ed. David Carroll, New York: Columbia University Press, 1989.

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• I always dream of a pen that would be a syringe.

  Jacques Derrida

  Dream, Communication, Would Be

  Geoffrey Bennington, Jacques Derrida (1999). “Jacques Derrida”, p.20, University of Chicago Press

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• There is a future which is predictable, programmed, scheduled, foreseeable. But there is a future, l'avenir (to come) which refers to someone who comes whose arrival is totally unexpected. For me, that is the real future. That which is totally unpredictable. The Other who comes without my being able to anticipate their arrival. So if there is a real future, beyond the other known future, it is l'avenir in that it is the coming of the Other when I am completely unable to foresee their arrival.

  Jacques Derrida

  Real, Able, Unexpected

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• We are all mediators, translators.

  Jacques Derrida

  Translators, Mediators

  Jacques Derrida (1995). “Points . .: Interviews, 1974-1994”, p.116, Stanford University Press

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• 1) Différance is the systematic play of differences, of the traces of differences, of the spacing by means of which elements are related to each other. This spacing is the simultaneously active and passive (the a of différance indicates this indecision as concerns activity and passivity, that which cannot be governed by or distributed between the terms of this opposition) production of the intervals without which the "full" terms would not signify, would not function.

  Jacques Derrida

  Mean, Play, Differences

  "Positions" by Jacques Derrida, University of Chicago Press, (p. 21), 1982.

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• I speak only one language, and it is not my own.

  Jacques Derrida

  Language, Speak, My Own

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• The poet…is the man of metaphor: while the philosopher is interested only in the truth of meaning, beyond even signs and names, and the sophist manipulates empty signs…the poet plays on the multiplicity of signifieds.

  Jacques Derrida

  Men, Play, Names

  Jacques Derrida (1982). “Marges de la Philosophie”, p.248, University of Chicago Press

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• Everything is arranged so that it be this way, this is what is called culture.

  Jacques Derrida

  Culture, Way

  Jacques Derrida (1995). “Points . .: Interviews, 1974-1994”, p.340, Stanford University Press

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• As soon as there is language, generality has entered the scene.

  Jacques Derrida

  Language, Scene, Generalities

  Jacques Derrida (1995). “Points . .: Interviews, 1974-1994”, p.200, Stanford University Press

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• To pretend, I actually do the thing: I have therefore only pretended to pretend.

  Jacques Derrida

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• I’m no good for anything except taking the world apart and putting it together again (and I manage the latter less and less frequently).

  Jacques Derrida

  Together Again, World, Latter

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• The end approaches, but the apocalypse is long lived.

  Jacques Derrida

  Long, Apocalypse, Ends

  Harold Coward, Toby Foshay, Jacques Derrida (1992). “Derrida and Negative Theology”, p.59, SUNY Press

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• Within the university... you can study without waiting for any efficient or immediate result. You may search, just for the sake of searching, and try for the sake of trying. So there is a possibility of what I would call playing. It's perhaps the only place within society where play is possible to such an extent.

  Jacques Derrida

  Education, Play, Waiting

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• Peace is only possible when one of the warring sides takes the first step, the hazardous initiative, the risk of opening up dialogue, and decides to make the gesture that will lead not only to an armistice but to peace.

  Jacques Derrida

  Opening Up, Risk, Gestures

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• It is to have a compulsive, repetitive, and nostalgic desire for the archive, an irrepressible desire to return to the origin, a homesickness, a nostalgia for the return to the most archaic place of absolute commencement

  Jacques Derrida

  Desire, Archives, Return

  Jacques Derrida (1998). “Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression”, p.100, University of Chicago Press

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• Beauty only happens once.

  Jacques Derrida

  Beauty, Happens

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