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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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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
Contradict
Compose
Tension
Dies
Live
Real
Make
Things

More quotes by 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.
Jacques Derrida
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I do everything I think possible or acceptable to escape from this trap.
Jacques Derrida
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Cinema plus Psychoanalysis equals the Science of Ghosts.
Jacques Derrida
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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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I rightly pass for an atheist.
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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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
Jacques Derrida
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Every discourse, even a poetic or oracular sentence, carries with it a system of rules for producing analogous things and thus an outline of methodology.
Jacques Derrida
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These years of the Ecole Normale were an ordeal. Nothing was handed to me on the first try.
Jacques Derrida
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I love language as I love life itself!
Jacques Derrida
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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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If things were simple, word would have gotten around.
Jacques Derrida
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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.
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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We are all mediators, translators.
Jacques Derrida
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We are given over to absolute solitude. No one can speak with us and no one can speak for us we must take it upon ourselves, each of us must take it upon himself.
Jacques Derrida
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No one gets angry at a mathematician or a physicist whom he or she doesn't understand, or at someone who speaks a foreign language, but rather at someone who tampers with your own language.
Jacques Derrida
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As soon as there is language, generality has entered the scene.
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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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