Jacques Derrida Quotes

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

  Jacques Derrida

  Knowing, Speak, Seeing

  53 Copy quote

• 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

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

  Jacques Derrida

  Can Do, Ifs, I Can

  104 Copy quote

• 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

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• 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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• 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

  104 Copy quote

• 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

  122 Copy quote

• There is nothing outside the text

  Jacques Derrida

  Deconstruction

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

  51 Copy quote
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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.

  81 Copy quote

• 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

  99 Copy quote

• 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.

  84 Copy quote

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

  Jacques Derrida

  Language, Speak, My Own

  35 Copy quote

• 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

  19 Copy quote

• 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

  51 Copy quote

• 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

  39 Copy quote

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

  Jacques Derrida

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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

  77 Copy quote

• Whatever precautions you take so the photograph will look like this or that, there comes a moment when the photograph surprises you. It is the other's gaze that wins out and decides.

  Jacques Derrida

  Winning, Looks, Surprise

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• What cannot be said above all must not be silenced but written.

  Jacques Derrida

  Ironic, Irony, Said

  Jacques Derrida (1995). “Points . .: Interviews, 1974-1994”, p.2, Stanford University Press

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• There is no rigorous and effective deconstruction without the faithful memory of philosophies and literatures, without the respectful and competent reading of texts of the past, as well as singular works of our own time. Deconstruction is also a certain thinking about tradition and context. Mark Taylor evokes this with great clarity in the course of a remarkable introduction. He reconstitutes a set of premises without which no deconstruction could have seen the light of day.

  Jacques Derrida

  Memories, Philosophy, Reading

  77 Copy quote

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