Of Grammatology Quotes

“Il n'y a pas de hors-texte.”
― Jacques Derrida, 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, 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, Of Grammatology

“Writing is nothing but the representation of speech; it is bizarre that one gives more care to the determining of the image than to the object.—J.-J. Rousseau, Fragment inédit d’un essai sur les langues”
― Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology

“The progress of writing is thus a natural progress. And it is a progress of reason.”
― Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology

“What are man’s truths after all? They are man’s irrefutable errors.”
― Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology

“From this point of view, Rousseau knew that death is not the simple outside of life. Death by writing also inaugurates life. “I can certainly say that I never began to live, until I looked upon myself as a dead man” (Confessions, Book 6 [p. 236]).”
― Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology

“Jean-Jacques chooses to be absent and to write. Paradoxically, he will hide himself to show himself better, and he will confide in written speech: “I would love society like others, if I were not sure of showing myself not only at a disadvantage, but as completely different from what I am. The part that I have taken of writing and hiding myself is precisely the one that suits me. If I were present, one would never know what I was worth” (Confessions). The admission is singular and merits emphasis: Jean-Jacques breaks with others, only to present himself to them in written speech. Protected by solitude, he will turn and re-turn his sentences at leisure.1”
― Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology

“Er is niets buiten de tekst.”
― Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology

“That is why the maxim of natural goodness: “Do to others as you would have them do unto you” should be tempered by this other maxim, “much less perfect indeed, but perhaps more useful; do good to yourself with as little evil as possible to others” (Second Discourse, p. 156) [p. 185; translation modified]. The latter is put “in place” of the former.”
― Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology

“He who imagines nothing senses no-one but himself; he is alone in the midst of humankind”
― Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology

“simply one problem among others.”
― Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology

“by this very forgetting, he arrives at a sense for truth.”
― Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology

“responsibility itself must cohabit with frivolity, this need not be cause for gloom.”
― Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology

“the operation that substitutes writing for speech also replaces presence by value: to the I am or to the I am present thus sacrificed, a what I am or a what I am worth is preferred. “If I were present, one would never know what I was worth.” I renounce my present life, my present and concrete existence in order to make myself known in the ideality of truth and value. A wellknown schema. The battle by which I wish to raise myself above my life even while I retain it, in order to enjoy recognition, is in this case within myself, and writing is indeed the phenomenon of this battle.”
― Jacques Derrida, 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, Of Grammatology