Quotes by Jacques Derrida

“The poetis 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 signsthe poet plays on the multiplic...”

“But because me and myself, as you no doubt are well aware, we are going to die, my relationand yours tooto the event of this text, which otherwise never quite makes it, our relation is that of a st...”

“And still the text will remain, if it is really cryptic and parodying (and I tell you that it is so through and through. I might as well tell you since it wont be of any help to you. Even my admiss...”

“In general, I try and distinguish between what one calls the Future and lavenir [the to come]. The future is that which tomorrow, later, next century will be. There is a future which is predictab...”

“A text is not a text unless it hides from the first comer, from the first glance, the law of its composition and the rules of its game. A text remains, moreover, forever imperceptible. Its laws and...”

“Every sign, linguistic or nonlinguistic, spoken or written (in the usual sense of this opposition), as a small or large unity, can be cited, put between quotation marks; thereby it can break with e...”

“Therefore we will not listen to the source itself in order to learn what it is or what it means, but rather to the turns of speech, the allegories, figures, metaphors, as you will, into which the s...”

“It goes without saying that these effects do not suffice to annul the necessity for a change of terrain. It also goes without saying that the choice between these two forms of deconstruction cannot...”

“Let us being again. To take some examples: why should literature still designate that which already breaks away from literatureaway from what has always been conceived and signified under that name...”

“For the same reason there is nowhere to begin to trace the sheaf or the graphics of differance. For what is put into question is precisely the quest for a rightful beginning, an absolute point of d...”

“Still less, despite appearances, will it have been a collection of three essays whose itinerary it would be time, after the fact, to recognize; whose continuity and underlying laws could now be poi...”

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

“Post-structuralism is a reaction to structuralism and works against seeing language as a stable, closed system. It is a shift from seeing the poem or novel as a closed entity, equipped with definit...”

“I always dream of a pen that would be a syringe.”

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

“These two poles, the unconditional and the conditional, are absolutely heterogeneous, and must remain irreducible to one another. They are nonetheless indissociable: if one wants, and it is necessa...”

“I remain torn (between a hyberbolic ethical vision of forgiveness, pure forgiveness, and the reality of a society at work in pragmatic processes of reconciliation). But without power, desire, or ne...”

“Contrary to what phenomenologywhich is always phenomenology of perceptionhas tried to make us believe, contrary to what our desire cannot fail to be tempted into believing, the thing itself always ...”

“The circle of the return to birth can only remain open, but this is a chance, a sign of life, and a wound.”

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