Alain Dib > Alain's Quotes

“As the flowers are all made sweeter
by the sunshine and the dew,
So this old world is made brighter
by the lives of folks like you.”
― Bonnie Parker

“Almighty God, I am sorry I am now an atheist, but have You read Nietzsche?”
― John Fante, Ask the Dust

“Justice, might.—It is right that what is just should be obeyed; it is necessary that what is strongest should be obeyed. Justice without might is helpless; might without justice is tyrannical. Justice without might is gainsaid, because there are always offenders; might without justice is condemned. We must then combine justice and might, and for this end make what is just strong, or what is strong just.

Justice is subject to dispute; might is easily recognised and is not disputed. So we cannot give might to justice, because might has gainsaid justice, and has declared that it is she herself who is just. And thus being unable to make what is just strong, we have made what is strong just.”
― Blaise Pascal, Pensées

“People don't get what they deserve. They just get what they get. There's nothing any of us can do about it.”
― Gregory House, M.D.

“To pretend, I actually do the thing: I have therefore only pretended to pretend.”
― Jacques Derrida

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

“Monsters cannot be announced. One cannot say: 'Here are our monsters,' without immediately turning the monsters into pets.”
― Jacques Derrida

“I speak only one language, and it is not my own.”
― Jacques Derrida, Monolingualism of the Other: or, The Prosthesis of Origin

“I always dream of a pen that would be a syringe.”
― Jacques Derrida, Jacques Derrida

“Psychoanalysis has taught that the dead – a dead parent, for example – can be more alive for us, more powerful, more scary, than the living. It is the question of ghosts.”
― Jaques Derrida

“The poet…is the man of metaphor: while the philosopher is interested only in the truth of meaning, beyond even signs and names, and the sophist manipulates empty signs…the poet plays on the multiplicity of signifieds.”
― Jacques Derrida

“If this work seems so threatening, this is because it isn't simply eccentric or strange, but competent, rigorously argued, and carrying conviction”
― Derrida Jacques

“Contrary to what phenomenology—which is always phenomenology of perception—has tried to make us believe, contrary to what our desire cannot fail to be tempted into believing, the thing itself always escapes.”
― Jacques Derrida

“Such a caring for death, an awakening that keeps vigil over death, a conscience that looks death in the face, is another name for freedom.”
― Jacques Derrida

“We are given over to absolute solitude. No one can speak with us and no one can speak for us; we must take it upon ourselves, each of us must take it upon himself.”
― Jacques Derrida, The Gift of Death

“Cinema plus Psychoanalysis equals the Science of Ghosts.”
― Jacques Derrida

“In general, I try and distinguish between what one calls the Future and “l’avenir” [the ‘to come]. The future is that which – tomorrow, later, next century – will be. There is a future which is predictable, programmed, scheduled, foreseeable. But there is a future, l’avenir (to come) which refers to someone who comes whose arrival is totally unexpected. For me, that is the real future. That which is totally unpredictable. The Other who comes without my being able to anticipate their arrival. So if there is a real future, beyond the other known future, it is l’avenir in that it is the coming of the Other when I am completely unable to foresee their arrival.”
― Jacques Derrida

“The traditional statement about language is that it is in itself living, and that writing is the dead part of language.”
― Jacques Derrida

“how can I say 'I love you', if I know the love is you .. the word 'love' either as a verb or a noun would be destroyed in front of you”
― Jacques Derrida

“Love is the longing for the half of ourselves we have lost.”
― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being