Jacques Derrida quotes - page 3

The first problem of the media is posed by what does not get translated, or even published in the dominant political languages. (Jacques Derrida)
There is no outside-text." It is usually mistranslated as "There is nothing outside the text" by his opponents to make it appear that Derrida is claiming nothing exists beyond language (see Searle–Derrida debate). In French, that mistranslated phrase would actually read "Il n'y a rien en dehors du texte. View quote
Jacques Derrida
No one gets angry at a mathematician or a physicist whom he or she doesn't understand at all, or at someone who speaks a foreign language, but rather at someone who tampers with your own language, with this 'relation,' precisely, which is yours. View quote
Jacques Derrida
This book, admirable in so many respects, power in its break and style, is even more intimidating for me in that, having formely had the good fortune to study under Michel Foucault, I retain the consciousness of an admiring and grateful disciple. Now, the disciple's consciousness, when he starts, I would not say to dispute, but to engage in dialogue with the master or, better, to articulate the interminable and silent dialogue which made him into a disciple-this disciple's consciousness is an unhappy consciousness. View quote
Jacques Derrida
The dissimulation of the woven texture can in any case take centuries to undo its web: a web that envelops a web, undoing the web for centuries; reconstituting it too as an organism, indefinitely regenerating its own tissue behind the cutting trace, the decision of each reading. There is always a surprise in store for the anatomy or physiology of any criticism that might think it had mastered the game, surveyed all the threads at once, deluding itself, too, in wanting to look at the text without touching it, without laying a hand on the "object," without risking- which is the only chance of entering into the game, by getting a few fingers caught- the addition of some new thread. View quote
Jacques Derrida
Oh. Marx's love for Shakespeare! It is well known. Chris Hani shared the same passion. I have just learned this and I like the idea. Even though Marx more often quotes Timon of Athens, the Manifesto seems to evoke or convoke, right from the start, the first coming of the silent ghost, the apparition of the spirit that does not answer, on those ramparts of Elsinore which is then the old Europe. View quote
Jacques Derrida
Contrary to what phenomenology- which is always phenomenology of perception- has tried to make us believe, contrary to what our desire cannot fail to be tempted into believing, the thing itself always escapes. View quote
Jacques Derrida
How can I say 'I love you', if I know the love is you.. the word 'love' either as a verb or a noun would be destroyed in front of you. View quote
Jacques Derrida
We are all mediators, translators. View quote
Jacques Derrida
Who ever said that one was born just once? View quote
Jacques Derrida
As soon as there is language, generality has entered the scene. (Jacques Derrida)
The age is off its hinges. Everything, beginning with time, seems out of kilter, unjust, dis-adjusted. The world is going very badly, it wears as it grows. View quote
Jacques Derrida
The time is out of joint. The world is going badly. It is worn but its wear no longer counts. Old age or youth-one no longer counts in that way. The world has more than one age. We lack the measure of the measure. We no longer realize the wear, we no longer take account of it as of a single age in the progress of history. Neither maturation, nor crisis, nor even agony. Something else. What is happening is happening to age itself, it strikes a blow at the teleological order of history. What is coming, in which the untimely appears, is happening to time but it does not happen in time. Contretemps. The time is out of joint. View quote
Jacques Derrida
I never give in to the temptation to be difficult just for the sake of being difficult. That would be too ridiculous. View quote
Jacques Derrida
I do not believe in pure idioms. I think there is naturally a desire, for whoever speaks or writes, to sign in an idiomatic, irreplaceable manner. View quote
Jacques Derrida
Still today, I cannot cross the threshold of a teaching institution without physical symptoms, in my chest and my stomach, of discomfort or anxiety. And yet I have never left school. View quote
Jacques Derrida
In Algeria, I had begun to get into literature and philosophy. I dreamed of writing-and already models were instructing the dream, a certain language governed it. View quote
Jacques Derrida
I wrote some bad poetry that I published in North African journals, but even as I withdrew into this reading, I also led the life of a kind of young hooligan. View quote
Jacques Derrida
These years of the Ecole Normale were an ordeal. Nothing was handed to me on the first try. View quote
Jacques Derrida
The circle of the return to birth can only remain open, but this is a chance, a sign of life, and a wound. View quote
Jacques Derrida
Certain readers resented me when they could no longer recognize their territory, their institution. (Jacques Derrida)
I have always had trouble recognizing myself in the features of the intellectual playing his political role according to the screenplay that you are familiar with and whose heritage deserves to be questioned. View quote
Jacques Derrida
My most resolute opponents believe that I am too visible, that I am a little too alive, that my name echoes too much in the texts which they nevertheless claim to be inaccessible. View quote
Jacques Derrida
These critics organize and practice in my case a sort of obsessive personality cult which philosophers should know how to question and above all, to moderate. View quote
Jacques Derrida
In philosophy, you have to reckon with the implicit level of an accumulated reserve, and thus with a very great number of relays, with the shared responsibility of these relays. View quote
Jacques Derrida