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Such a caring for death, an awakening that keeps vigil over death, a conscience that looks death in the face, is another name for freedom.

Jacques Derrida

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Jacques Derrida
Age: 74 †
Born: 1930
Born: July 15
Died: 2004
Died: October 9
Literary Critic
Philosopher
University Teacher
Writer
Jackie Derrida
Jackie Elie Derrida
Jackie Élie Derrida
J. Derrida
Another
Keeps
Looks
Conscience
Name
Names
Face
Faces
Vigil
Freedom
Awakening
Death
Caring

More quotes by Jacques Derrida

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As soon as there is language, generality has entered the scene.
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But can one not conceive of a presence, and of a presence to itself of the subject before speech or signs, a presence to itself of the subject in a silent and intuitive consciousness? Such a question therefore presupposes that, prior to the sign, and outside it, excluding any trace and any différance, something like consciousness is possible.
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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.
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Who ever said that one was born just once?
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Surviving - that is the other name of a mourning whose possibility is never to be awaited.
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Monsters cannot be announced. One cannot say: 'Here are our monsters,' without immediately turning the monsters into pets.
Jacques Derrida
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I am like a child ready for the apocalypse, I am the apocalypse itself, that is to say, the ultimate and first event of the end, the unveiling and the verdict.
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I have always had school sickness, as others have seasickness. I cried when it was time to go back to school long after I was old enough to be ashamed of such behavior.
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Beyond the touchline there is nothing.
Jacques Derrida
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The trace I leave to me means at once my death, to come or already come, and the hope that it will survive me. It is not an ambition of immortality it is fundamental. I leave here a bit of paper, I leave, I die it is impossible to exit this structure it is the unchanging form of my life. Every time I let something go, I live my death in writing.
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I say things that contradict each other, that are in real tension with each other, that compose me, that make me live, and that will make me die.
Jacques Derrida
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Each time this identity announces itself, someone or something cries: Look out for the trap, youre caught. Take off, get free, disengage yourself.
Jacques Derrida
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The circle of the return to birth can only remain open, but this is a chance, a sign of life, and a wound.
Jacques Derrida
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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
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The boarding-school experience in Paris was very hard, I didn't put up with it very well. I was sick all the time, or in any case frail, on the edge of a nervous breakdown.
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
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Deconstruction never had meaning or interest, at least in my eyes, than as a radicalization, that is to say, also within the tradition of a certain Marxism, in a certain spirit of Marxism.
Jacques Derrida
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I always dream of a pen that would be a syringe.
Jacques Derrida
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Even if we're in a state of hopelessness, a sense of expectation is an integral part of our relationship to time. Hopelessness is possible only because we do hope that some good, loving someone could come. If that's what Heidegger meant, then I agree with him.
Jacques Derrida
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I do everything I think possible or acceptable to escape from this trap.
Jacques Derrida