Quotes from Jacques Derrida

five traits: decision, desire, will, closure, and security.

Speech frightens me because, by never saying enough, I also say too much.

Every revolution, whether atheistic or religious, bears witness to a return of the sacred ? in the form of enthusiasm or fervour, otherwise known as the presence of the gods within us

Er is niets buiten de tekst.

Elu jaatamine pole muud kui teatavat sorti mõte surmast. See pole ei vastandumine ega ka ükskõiksus surma suhtes. Tõepoolest, võiks peaaegu öelda et midagi vastupidist, kui see poleks omakorda liiga lihtne vastandumisele järele andmine

One of the meanings of what is called a victim ( a victim of anything or anyone whatsoever) is precisely to be erased in its meaning as victim. The absolute victim is a victim who cannot even protest. One cannot even identify the victim as victim. He or she cannot even present himself or herself as such. He or she is completely covered by language, annihilated by history, a victim one cannot identify.

Our faith is not assured, because faith can never be, it must never be a certainty.

For there to be a gift, there must be no reciprocity, return, exchange, countergift, or debt. (...) For there to be a gift, it is necessary that the donee not give back, amortize, reimburse, (...)

If we are bound and determined to speak in terms of reference, nuclear war is the only possible referent of any discourse and any experience that would share their condition with that of literature. If, according to a structuring hypothesis, a fantasy or phantasm, nuclear war is equivalent to the total destruction of the archive, if not of the human habitat, it becomes the absolute referent, the horizon and the condition of all the others.

the constancy of God in my life is called by other names, so that I quite rightly pass for an atheist

The means are a technology of the sign, the "technical mastery" of the sign (65).

Language being the break with madness, it adheres more thoroughly to its essence and vocation, makes a cleaner break with madness, if it pits itself against madness more freely and gets closer and closer to it: to the point of being separated from it only by the "transparent sheet" of which Joyce speaks, that is, by itself—for this diaphaneity is nothing other than the language, meaning, possibility, and elementary discretion of a nothing that neutralizes everything.

responsibility itself must cohabit with frivolity, this need not be cause for gloom.

as if perception and thought were independent of the sign

ELLE NE PARLE PAS L'INNOMMÉE OR TU L'ENTENDS MIEUX QUE MOI AVANT MOI EN CE MOMENT MÊME

What are man's truths after all? They are man's irrefutable errors.

how to justify . . . the decision which subordinates a reflection on the sign to a logic?

it is based on the foundation, as in Descartes, of the "I am," the foundation of subjectivity and consciousness

le plus ancien encore à venir ~ elle ne parle pas l'innommée or tu l'entends mieux que moi avant moi en ce moment même

we seem to know who we are

One can, of course, speak several languages. There are speakers who are competent in more than one language. Some even write several languages at a time (prostheses, grafts, translation, transposition) . But do they not always do it with a view to an absolute idiom? and in the promise of a still unheard-of language? of a sole poem previously inaudible?

we seem to be present to ourselves

we seem to be present, we desire the same

presence and self-presence (89).