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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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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
Taking
Less
Together
Frequently
Anything
Latter
Good
Manage
World
Apart
Putting
Except

More quotes by Jacques Derrida

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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.
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Cinema plus Psychoanalysis equals the Science of Ghosts.
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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.
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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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There is nothing outside of the text. [Fr., Il n'y a pas de hors-texte.]
Jacques Derrida
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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.
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Certain readers resented me when they could no longer recognize their territory, their institution.
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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.
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The first problem of the media is posed by what does not get translated, or even published in the dominant political languages.
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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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We are all mediators, translators.
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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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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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Actually, when I write, there is a feeling of necessity, of something that is stronger than myself that demands that I must write as I write.
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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Who ever said that one was born just once?
Jacques Derrida
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I would like to write you so simply, so simply, so simply. Without having anything ever catch the eye, excepting yours alone, ... so that above all the language remains self-evidently secret, as if it were being invented at every step, and as if it were burning immediately
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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.
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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