Jacques Derrida Quotes

What I always liked about Socrates was his insistence on questioning things for the sake of reaching some sort of clarity - even if it is only clarity about the gaps in our knowledge.

I am a philosopher, not a scientist, and we philosophers are better at questions than answers.

To a philosopher no circumstance, however trifling, is too minute.

The truth is, that common-sense, or thought as it first emerges above the level of the narrowly practical, is deeply imbued with that bad logical quality to which the epithet metaphysical is commonly applied; and nothing can clear it up but a severe course of logic.

Englishmen are babes in philosophy and so prefer faction-fighting to the labour of its unfamiliar thought.

What is it to be a philosopher? Is it not to be prepared against events?

I could be wrong. Not being certain is what being a philosopher is all about.

A philosopher is a sort of intellectual yokel who gawks at things that sensible people take for granted.

A philosophy is characterized more by the formulation of its problem than by its solution of them.

The common prejudice against philosophy is the result of the incapacity of the multitude to deal with the highest problems.

A man who wants the truth becomes a scientist; a man who wants to give free play to his subjectivity may become a writer; but what should a man do who wants something in between?

What sort of philosophers are we, who know absolutely nothing of the origin and destiny of cats?

Say, Not so, and you will out circle the philosophers.

An extensive knowledge is needful to thinking people-it takes away the heat and fever; and helps, by widening speculation, to ease the burden of the mystery.

I am only a philosopher, and there is only one thing that a philosopher can be relied on to do, and that is, to contradict other philosophers.

As it is, the lover of inquiry must follow his beloved wherever it may lead him.

To live without philosophizing is in truth the same as keeping the eyes closed without attempting to open them.

Only when one thinks even much more madly than the philosophers can one solve their problems.

We must re-center philosophy within our frame of reference which I think is the way to deal with it.

The scientist, by the very nature of his commitment, creates more and more questions, never fewer. Indeed the measure of our intellectual maturity, one philosopher suggests, is our capacity to feel less and less satisfied with our answers to better problems.

The beginning of philosophy is the recognition of the conflict between opinions.

What terrible questions we are learning to ask! The former men believed in magic, by which temples, cities, and men were swallowed up, and all trace of them gone. We are coming on the secret of a magic which sweeps out of men's minds all vestige of theism and beliefs which they and their fathers held and were framed upon.

i'm in a muddle about a lot of things -- i've just discovered that i've a mind, and i'm starting to read" "read what?" "everything. i have to pick and choose, of course, but mostly things that make me think.

the essence of philosophy is not the possession of the truth but the search for truth. ... Philosophy means to be on the way. Its questions are more essential than its answers, and every answer becomes a new question.

A lot of philosophy is bull***t, but a lot of it is what we write songs about too. And it's organizing your thoughts, organizing your intellect.