“Il n'y a pas de hors-texte.”
― Jacques Derrida, quote from Of Grammatology
“Let us narrow the arguments down further. In certain respects, the theme of supplementarity is certainly no more than one theme among others. It is in a chain, carried by it. Perhaps one could substitute something else for it. But it happens that this theme describes the chain itself, the being-chain of a textual chain, the structure of substitution, the articulation of desire and of language, the logic of all conceptual oppositions taken over by Rousseau…It tells us in a text what a text is, it tells us in writing what writing it, in Rousseau’s writing it tells us Jean-Jacque’s desire etc…the concept of the supplement and the theory of writing designate textuality itself in Rousseau’s text in an indefinitely multiplied structure—en abyme.”
― Jacques Derrida, quote from Of Grammatology
“There are things like reflecting pools, and images, an infinite reference from one to the other, but no longer a source, a spring. There is no longer any simple origin. For what is reflected it split in itself and not only as an addition to itself of its image. The reflection, the image, the double, splits what it doubles. The origin of the speculation becomes a difference. What can look at itself is not one; and the law of the addition of the origin to its representation, or the thing to its image, is that one plus one makes at least three.”
― Jacques Derrida, quote from Of Grammatology
“Er is niets buiten de tekst.”
― Jacques Derrida, quote from Of Grammatology
“For the concept of the supplement - which here determines that of the representative image - harbors within itself two significations whose cohabitation is as strange as it is necessary. The supplement adds itself, it is a surplus, a plenitude enriching another plenitude, the fullest measure of presence. But the supplement supplements. It adds only to replace. It intervenes or insinuates itself in-the-place-of; if it fills, it is as one fills a void. If it represents and makes an image, it is by the anterior default of a presence. The sign is always the supplement of the thing itself. The supplement will always be the moving of the tongue or acting through the hands of others. In it everything is brought together: Progress as the possibility of perversion, regression toward an evil that is not natural and that adheres to the power of substitution, that permits us to absent ourselves and act by proxy, through the hands of others. Through the written. This substitution always has the form of the sign. The scandal is that the sign, the image, or the representer, become forces and make "the world move". Blindness to the supplement is the law. We must begin wherever we are and the thought of the trace, which cannot take the scent into account, has already taught of the trace, which cannot not take the scent into account, has already taught us that it was impossible to justify a point of departure absolutely, Wherever we are: in a text where we already believe ourselves to be.”
― Jacques Derrida, quote from Of Grammatology
“O amor, presidindo a ação, insinuava o prazer e o gozo. E confesso, de bom grado, que me persuadi sem dificuldade de que, sem amor, o prazer, por maior e mais perfeito que seja, fica vulgar, sejamos rei ou vagabundo.”
― John Cleland, quote from Fanny Hill, or Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure
“Werewolves are not the subject of academe,” she said, “but you know what the professors would be saying if they were. ‘Monsters die out when the collective imagination no longer needs them. Species death like this is nothing more than a shift in the aggregate psychic agenda. In ages past the beast in man was hidden in the dark, disavowed. The transparency of modern history makes that impossible: We’ve seen ourselves in concentration camps, the gulags, the jungles, the killing fields, we’ve read ourselves in the annals of True Crime. Technology turned up the lights and now there’s no getting away from the fact: The beast is redundant. It’s been us all along.”
― Glen Duncan, quote from The Last Werewolf
“Men may irritate women entirely by accident, but I believe they infuriate one another wholly by design.”
― quote from The Glass Sentence
“Maybe it involved a woman. Oh, maybe even a nun—ooh! Wouldn’t that be scandalous?” “Indeed, but no.”
― Jenn Bennett, quote from Kindling the Moon
“In a free society, we do not imprison those who violate profound cultural taboos or burn them at the stake. But they must be identified as dangerous radicals, not fit to be counted among the priesthood. The reaction is appropriate. To raise the dread question is to open the possibility that the institutions responsible “for the indoctrination of the young” and the other propaganda institutions may be infected by the most dangerous of plagues: insight and understanding. Awareness of the facts might threaten the social order, protected by a carefully spun web of pluralist mysticism, faith in the benevolence of our pure-hearted leadership, and general superstitious belief. An”
― Noam Chomsky, quote from The Essential Chomsky
BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
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