Quotes by Jacques Derrida

About Jacques Derrida:

Jacques Derrida is best known for developing a form of semiotic analysis known as deconstruction, which he discussed in numerous texts. He is one of the major figures associated with post-structuralism and postmodern philosophy.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

I never give in to the temptation to be difficult just for the sake of being difficult. That would be too ridiculous.

Jacques Derrida

In Algeria, I had begun to get into literature and philosophy. I dreamed of writing-and already models were instructing the dream, a certain language governed it.

Jacques Derrida

My most resolute opponents believe that I am too visible, that I am a little too alive, that my name echoes too much in the texts which they nevertheless claim to be inaccessible.

Jacques Derrida

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

Still today, I cannot cross the threshold of a teaching institution without physical symptoms, in my chest and my stomach, of discomfort or anxiety. And yet I have never left school.

Jacques Derrida

I have always had trouble recognizing myself in the features of the intellectual playing his political role according to the screenplay that you are familiar with and whose heritage deserves to be questioned.

Jacques Derrida

The first problem of the media is posed by what does not get translated, or even published in the dominant political languages.

Jacques Derrida

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

These years of the Ecole Normale were an ordeal. Nothing was handed to me on the first try.

Jacques Derrida

We are all mediators, translators.

Jacques Derrida

Whatever precautions you take so the photograph will look like this or that, there comes a moment when the photograph surprises you. It is the other's gaze that wins out and decides.

Jacques Derrida

Who ever said that one was born just once?

Jacques Derrida

Why is it the philosopher who is expected to be easier and not some scientist who is even more inaccessible?

Jacques Derrida

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

Jacques Derrida

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

Jacques Derrida

The bricoleur, says Levi-Strauss, is someone who uses ‘the means at hand,’ that is, the instruments he finds at his disposition around him, those which are already there, which had not been especially conceived with an eye to the operation for wh...

Jacques Derrida

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

The poet…is 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 signs…the poet plays on the multiplicity of signifieds.

Jacques Derrida

In general, I try and distinguish between what one calls the Future and “l’avenir” [the ‘to come]. The future is that which – tomorrow, later, next century – will be. There is a future which is predictable, programmed, scheduled, foreseea...

Jacques Derrida

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 source has deviated, in order to lose it or rediscover...

Jacques Derrida

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.

Jacques Derrida

Author Bio

  • NameJacques Derrida
  • DescriptionFrench philosopher (1930-2004)
  • BornJuly 15, 1930
  • DiedOctober 9, 2004
  • CountryFrance
  • ProfessionPhilosopher; Author
  • AwardsTheodor W. Adorno Award