The blindness that opens the eye is not the one that darkens vision. Tears and not sight are the essence of the eye.
Jacques DerridaRead
We are all mediators, translators.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote suggests that everyone plays a role in interpreting and communicating ideas between different perspectives.
Jacques Derrida's quote emphasizes the idea that individuals act as mediators and translators in their interactions and communications. It reflects the complexity of understanding and conveying thoughts, highlighting how meaning is shaped by context and interpretation. In essence, we all navigate and articulate the intricacies of language and ideas, bridging gaps between diverse viewpoints and cultural contexts.
Themes
MediationTranslationCommunicationUnderstandingInterpretation
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about cultural differences, one may cite this quote to emphasize the role of communication.
More from Jacques Derrida
All quotes βEverything is arranged so that it be this way, this is what is called culture.
Jacques DerridaRead
No one gets angry at a mathematician or a physicist whom he or she doesn't understand, or at someone who speaks a foreign language, but rather at someone who tampers with your own language.
Jacques DerridaRead
Psychoanalysis has taught that the dead β a dead parent, for example β can be more alive for us, more powerful, more scary, than the living. It is the question of ghosts.
Jacques DerridaRead
The trace I leave to me means at once my death, to come or already come, and the hope that it will survive me. It is not an ambition of immortality; it is fundamental. I leave here a bit of paper, I leave, I die; it is impossible to exit this structure; it is the unchanging form of my life. Every time I let something go, I live my death in writing.
Jacques DerridaRead
Every discourse, even a poetic or oracular sentence, carries with it a system of rules for producing analogous things and thus an outline of methodology.
Jacques DerridaRead
Similar quotes
When the province of physical theory was extended to encompass microscopic phenomena through the creation of quantum mechanics, the concept of consciousness came to the fore again. It was not possible to formulate the laws of quantum mechanics in a fully consistent way without reference to the consciousness.
Eugene WignerRead
It is impossible to escape the impression that people commonly use false standards of measurement -- that they seek power, success and wealth for themselves and admire them in others, and that they underestimate what is of true value in life.
Sigmund FreudRead
First Amendment freedoms are most in danger when the government seeks to control thought or to justify its laws for that impermissible end. The right to think is the beginning of freedom, and speech must be protected from the government because speech is the beginning of thought.
Anthony KennedyRead
After an error you need not only to remove the causes but also to correct the error itself: after a sin you must not only, if possible, remove the temptation, you must also go back and repent the sin itself. In each case an 'undoing' is required.
C. S. LewisRead
The sun never sets. It is only an appearance due to the observer's limited perspective. And yet, what a sublime illusion it is.
Eckhart TolleRead
If we just sit and exist, and understand that, I think it will be helpful in a world that seems like a record that's going faster and faster, we're spinning off the edge of the universe.
Martin ScorseseRead