Jacques Derrida Quotes

Jacques Derrida on Death

• “It has no sense and cannot just unless it comes to terms with death. Mine as (well as) that of the other. Between life and death, then, this is indeed the place of a sententious injunction that always feigns to speak the just.”

  Specters of Marx(1993) | Exordium

Jacques Derrida on God

• “At the end of Being and Nothingness , ... Being in-itself and Being for-itself were of Being ; and this totality of beings, in which they were effected, itself was linked up to itself, relating and appearing to itself, by means of the essential project of human-reality. What was named in this way, in an allegedly neutral and undetermined way, was nothing other than the metaphysical unity of man and God, the relation of man to God, the project of becoming God as the project constituting human-reality. Atheism changes nothing in this fundamental structure.”

  The Ends of Man," Margins of Philosophy , tr. w/ notes by Alan Bass. The University of Chicago Press. Chicago, 1982. (original French published in Paris, 1972, as Marges de la philosophie ). p. 116

Jacques Derrida on Justice

• Attributed to Jacques Derrida:

  “Justice is undeconstructible.”

Jacques Derrida on Knowledge

• Attributed to Jacques Derrida:

  “Deconstruction is not a method, and cannot be transformed into one.”

• “Il n'y a pas de hors-texte.”

  Of Grammatology (1967). G. Spivak translated this as "There is nothing outside the text," which Derrida opponents have characterized to mean that nothing exists but language. Later scholarship has translated it as "There is no outside-of-text" or "There is nothing free of context," i.e. all experience is mediated by interpretation.

• “The Ends of Man," Margins of Philosophy , tr. w/ notes by Alan Bass. The University of Chicago Press. Chicago, 1982. (original French published in Paris, 1972, as Marges de la philosophie ). p. 116”

  At the end of Being and Nothingness , ... Being in-itself and Being for-itself were of Being ; and this totality of beings, in which they were effected, itself was linked up to itself, relating and appearing to itself, by means of the essential project of human-reality. What was named in this way, in an allegedly neutral and undetermined way, was nothing other than the metaphysical unity of man an

• “The Ends of Man," Margins of Philosophy , tr. w/ notes by Alan Bass. The University of Chicago Press. Chicago, 1982. (original French published in Paris, 1972, as Marges de la philosophie ). p. 123”

  The end of man (as a factual anthropological limit) is announced to thought from the vantage of the end of man (as a determined opening or the infinity of a telos ). Man is that which is in relation to his end, in the fundamentally equivocal sense of the word. Since always.

• “What is called "objectivity," scientific for instance (in which I firmly believe, in a given situation) imposes itself only within a context which is extremely vast, old, firmly established, or rooted in a network of conventions … and yet which still remains a context.”

  Limited Inc (1977)

• “As soon as we cease to believe in such an engineer and in a discourse which breaks with the received historical discourse, and as soon as we admit that every finite discourse is bound by a certain bricolage and that the engineer and the scientist are also species of bricoleurs , then the very idea of bricolage is menaced and the difference in which it took on its meaning breaks down.”

  Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences," Writing and Difference , tr. w/ intro & notes by Alan Bass. The University of Chicago Press. Chicago, 1978. p. 285

• “Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences," Writing and Difference , tr. w/ intro & notes by Alan Bass. The University of Chicago Press. Chicago, 1978. p. 285”

  As soon as we cease to believe in such an engineer and in a discourse which breaks with the received historical discourse, and as soon as we admit that every finite discourse is bound by a certain bricolage and that the engineer and the scientist are also species of bricoleurs , then the very idea of bricolage is menaced and the difference in which it took on its meaning breaks down.

• “Monsters cannot be announced. One cannot say: 'here are our monsters', without immediately turning the monsters into pets.”

  Some Statements and Truisms about Neologisms, Newisms, Postisms, Parasitisms, and other small Seismisms , The States of Theory, ed. David Carroll, New York: Columbia University Press, 1989.

• “Some Statements and Truisms about Neologisms, Newisms, Postisms, Parasitisms, and other small Seismisms , The States of Theory, ed. David Carroll, New York: Columbia University Press, 1989.”

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

• “Whatever the poverty of our knowledge in this respect, it is certain that the question of the sign is itself more or less, or in any event something other, than a sign of the times. To dream of reducing it to a sign of the times is to dream of violence.”

  Writing and Difference(1978) | Force and Signification

• “No one gets angry at a mathematician or a physicist whom he or she doesn't understand at all, or at someone who speaks a foreign language, but rather at someone who tampers with your own language, with this 'relation,' precisely, which is yours.”

  Derrida Jacques, Elisabeth Weber (1995), Points...: Interviews, 1974-1994 . p. 115

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Jacques Derrida on Love

• Attributed to Jacques Derrida:

  “Every other one is every other one.”

• Attributed to Jacques Derrida:

  “Friendship implies the privilege of being able to be alone in the presence of the friend.”

Jacques Derrida on Mind

• Attributed to Jacques Derrida:

  “I am at war with myself, it's true.”

• “The end of man (as a factual anthropological limit) is announced to thought from the vantage of the end of man (as a determined opening or the infinity of a telos ). Man is that which is in relation to his end, in the fundamentally equivocal sense of the word. Since always.”

  The Ends of Man," Margins of Philosophy , tr. w/ notes by Alan Bass. The University of Chicago Press. Chicago, 1982. (original French published in Paris, 1972, as Marges de la philosophie ). p. 123

• “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 .”

  Specters of Marx . Routledge, 1994. p. 115

Jacques Derrida on Time

• Attributed to Jacques Derrida:

  “The future can only be anticipated in the form of an absolute danger.”

• “In writing a history of madness, Foucault has attempted-and this is the greatest merit, but also the very infeasibility of his book-to write a history of madness itself. Itself. Of madness itself. That is by letting madness speak for itself.”

  Writing and Difference(1978) | Cogito and The History of Madness , p.37 (Routledge classics edition)

• “Cogito and The History of Madness (Routledge classics edition)”

  Writing and Difference(1978)

Jacques Derrida on Truth

• “There is nothing outside of the text.”

  Il n'y a pas de hors-texte.

Jacques Derrida on Virtue

• Attributed to Jacques Derrida:

  “Forgiveness forgives only the unforgivable. From the moment one forgives only what is forgivable, the very idea of forgiveness disappears.”