Philosophy Quote by Jacques Derrida — Inspiring Words on Life, Love & Wisdom

“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 it—which always amounts to the same.”

“A text is not a text unless it hides from the first comer, from the first glance, the law of its composition and the rules of its game. A text remains, moreover, forever imperceptible. Its laws and rules are not, however, harbored in the inaccessibility of a secret; it is simply that they can never be booked, in the present, into anything that could rigorously be called a perception.”

“Let us being again. To take some examples: why should “literature” still designate that which already breaks away from literature—away from what has always been conceived and signified under that name—or that which, not merely escaping literature, implacably destroys it? (Posed in these terms, the question would already be caught in the assurance of a certain fore-knowledge: can “what has always been conceived and signified under that name” be considered fundamentally homogeneous, univocal, or nonconflictual?) To take other examples: what historical and strategic function should henceforth be assigned to the quotation marks, whether visible or invisible, which transform this into a “book,” or which still make the deconstruction of philosophy into a “philosophical discourse”?”

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

“The wise man who has become accustomed to necessities knows better how to share with others than how to take from them, so great a treasure of self-sufficiency has he found.”

“I need just be a bayonet, a bayonet named Diving Punishment. I wish I'd been born a storm. Or a menace. Or a single grenade. No heart, no tears, just as a terrible gale'd have been good. If [by doing this] I become that, then so be it.”

“...the greater objective (representative) perfection there is in our idea of a thing, the greater also must be the perfection of its cause.”

“A lie repeated may build power, but it cannot build trust.”

“Whenever a soul leaves the body a void is felt across the world..”

“An honest bookstore would post the following sign above its 'self-help' section: 'For true self-help, please visit our philosophy, literature, history and science sections, find yourself a good book, read it, and think about it.”