Quote

We are all mediators, translators.

Jacques Derrida

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Mediators
Translators

More quotes by Jacques Derrida

Image
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
Image
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
Image
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.
Jacques Derrida
Image
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.
Jacques Derrida
Image
I always dream of a pen that would be a syringe.
Jacques Derrida
Image
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
Image
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.
Jacques Derrida
Image
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.
Jacques Derrida
Image
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
Image
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
Image
These years of the Ecole Normale were an ordeal. Nothing was handed to me on the first try.
Jacques Derrida
Image
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
Image
Monsters cannot be announced. One cannot say: 'Here are our monsters,' without immediately turning the monsters into pets.
Jacques Derrida
Image
I am one of those marranes who no longer say they are Jews even in the secret of their own hearts.
Jacques Derrida
Image
I do everything I think possible or acceptable to escape from this trap.
Jacques Derrida
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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