Deconstruction Quotes

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

“Man may feel like a feeble and powerless pawn, at some moment in his life. This apprehension can come out of the blue, in the middle of the day, at the center of a public place, like a cerebral attack. Check mated by 'daily routine', he may feel trapped in a smothering set of circumstances and only a deconstruction of all impeding barriers can bring about a vital mental deliverance. ( "Check and mate" )”
― Erik Pevernagie

“An insipid voice message or an incongruent emergence from the “other” world may disrupt our whole thinking system. If we are not able to deal with the fragmentation of our self and assess the deconstruction of our identity, a corny incident could easily capsize our being. A misinterpretation of facts and expectations may perturb our awareness and unsettle our perception. When “I” and “me” don’t get along very well, the road to oneness may be very often bumpy. (“Alors, tout a basculé”)”
― Erik Pevernagie

“Happiness is a flow between a playful construction and a painful deconstruction, undulating from a hampering past into a liberating 'now,' escorting a meandering flood of twists and turns, caressing the velvet sand of dreamy beaches or smashing sometimes into the rocks of reality. ("New York at arm's length of desire")”
― Erik Pevernagie, Words of Wisdom: Selected and illustrated by his readers

“A text is not a text unless it hides from the first comer, from the first glance, the law of its composition and the rules of its game. A text remains, moreover, forever imperceptible. Its laws and rules are not, however, harbored in the inaccessibility of a secret; it is simply that they can never be booked, in the present, into anything that could rigorously be called a perception.”
― Jacques Derrida, Dissemination

“I would see
one man fallen off me
shambling down the street.”
― Suman Pokhrel

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

“Every sign, linguistic or nonlinguistic, spoken or written (in the usual sense of this opposition), as a small or large unity, can be cited, put between quotation marks; thereby it can break with every given context, and engender infinitely new contexts in an absolutely nonsaturable fashion. This does not suppose that the mark is valid outside its context, but on the contrary that there are only contexts without any center of absolute anchoring. This citationality, duplication, or duplicity, this iterability of the mark is not an accident or anomaly, but is that (normal/abnormal) without which a mark could no longer even have a so-called “normal” functioning. What would a mark be that one could not cite? And whose origin could not be lost on the way?”
― Jacques Derrida, Margins of Philosophy

“In their effort to divorce language and experience, deconstructionist critics remind me of middle-class parents who do not allow their children to play in the street.”
― Charles Simic, The Unemployed Fortune-Teller: Essays and Memoirs

“Therefore we will not listen to the source itself in order to learn what it is or what it means, but rather to the turns of speech, the allegories, figures, metaphors, as you will, into which the source has deviated, in order to lose it or rediscover it—which always amounts to the same.”
― Jacques Derrida

“But because me and myself, as you no doubt are well aware, we are going to die, my relation—and yours too—to the event of this text, which otherwise never quite makes it, our relation is that of a structurally posthumous necessity.
Suppose, in that case, that I am not alone in my claim to know the idiomatic code (whose notion itself is already contradictory) of this event. What if somewhere, here or there, there are shares in this non-secret’s secret? Even so the scene would not be changed. The accomplices, as you are once again well aware, are also bound to die.”
― Jacques Derrida, Spurs: Nietzsche's Styles/Éperons: Les Styles de Nietzsche

“To express nostalgia for a childhood we no longer share is to deny the actual significance and humanity of children.”
― Perry Nodelman

“It goes without saying that these effects do not suffice to annul the necessity for a “change of terrain.” It also goes without saying that the choice between these two forms of deconstruction cannot be simple and unique. A new writing must weave and interlace these two motifs of deconstruction. Which amounts to saying that one must speak several languages and produce several texts at once. I would like to point out especially that the style of the first deconstruction is mostly that of the Heideggerian questions, and the other is mostly the one which dominates France today. I am purposely speaking in terms of a dominant style: because there are also breaks and changes of terrain in texts of the Heideggerian type; because the “change of terrain” is far from upsetting the entire French landscape to which I am referring; because what we need, perhaps, as Nietzsche said, is a change of “style”; and if there is style, Nietzsche reminded us, it must be plural.”
― Jacques Derrida, Margins of Philosophy

“Let us being again. To take some examples: why should “literature” still designate that which already breaks away from literature—away from what has always been conceived and signified under that name—or that which, not merely escaping literature, implacably destroys it? (Posed in these terms, the question would already be caught in the assurance of a certain fore-knowledge: can “what has always been conceived and signified under that name” be considered fundamentally homogeneous, univocal, or nonconflictual?) To take other examples: what historical and strategic function should henceforth be assigned to the quotation marks, whether visible or invisible, which transform this into a “book,” or which still make the deconstruction of philosophy into a “philosophical discourse”?”
― Jacques Derrida, Dissemination

“For the same reason there is nowhere to begin to trace the sheaf or the graphics of differance. For what is put into question is precisely the quest for a rightful beginning, an absolute point of departure, a principal responsibility. The problematic of writing is opened by putting into question the value of the arkhe. What I will propose here will not be elaborated simply as a philosophical discourse, operating according to principles, postulates, axioms, or definitions, and proceeding along the discursive lines of a linear order of reasons. In the delineation of differance everything is strategic and adventurous. Strategic because no transcendent truth present outside the field of writing can govern theologically the totality of the field. Adventurous because this strategy is a not simple strategy in the sense that strategy orients tactics according to a final goal, a telos or theme of domination, a mastery and ultimate reappropriation of the development of the field. Finally, a strategy without finality, what might be called blind tactics, or empirical wandering if the value of empiricism did not itself acquire its entire meaning in opposition to philosophical responsibility. If there is a certain wandering in the tracing of differance, it no more follows the lines of philosophical-logical discourse than that of its symmetrical and integral inverse, empirical-logical discourse. The concept of play keeps itself beyond this opposition, announcing, on the eve of philosophy and beyond it, the unity of chance and necessity in calculations without end.”
― Jacques Derrida, Margins of Philosophy

“Still less, despite appearances, will it have been a collection of three “essays” whose itinerary it would be time, after the fact, to recognize; whose continuity and underlying laws could now be pointed out; indeed, whose overall concept or meaning could at last, with all the insistence required on such occasions, be squarely set forth. I will not feign, according to the code, either premeditation or improvisation. These texts are assembled otherwise; it is not my intention here to present them.”
― Jacques Derrida, Dissemination

“And still the text will remain, if it is really cryptic and parodying (and I tell you that it is so through and through. I might as well tell you since it won’t be of any help to you. Even my admission can very well be a lie because there is dissimulation only if one tells the truth, only if one tells that one is telling the truth), still the text will remain indefinitely open, cryptic and parodying.”
― Jacques Derrida, Spurs: Nietzsche's Styles/Éperons: Les Styles de Nietzsche

“A marker of healing from religious trauma is not simply the process of deconstructing one’s worldview and identity and rebuilding a new one; it is also the willingness to remain open to shifting and changing over the course of one’s life.”
― Laura E. Anderson, When Religion Hurts You: Healing from Religious Trauma and the Impact of High-Control Religion

“I have lived far too much of my life with the end goal of eternal life in heaven, and so I missed a lot of life on earth.”
― Laura E. Anderson, When Religion Hurts You: Healing from Religious Trauma and the Impact of High-Control Religion

“If I had been more independent in my thinking then, I would have thought the matter through to a conclusion. But in those days it was easy for me to leave tangled thoughts knotted, their loose ends hanging. I didn't want to explore the treacherous mazes that such thoughts led into. I didn't want to reach the end of those mazes, because there, I knew, I would find myself and I was afraid I would not recognize myself after having taken so many confusing directions. I was beginning to suspect that I was not the person I was expected to be, and took it as evidence that somewhere I had taken a wrong turning.”
― Tsitsi Dangarembga, Nervous Conditions

“I don't think things happen to us for a reason. I don't think there is some all-knowing force directing our lives so that we can learn a lesson and pass on that knowledge to others. I don't think I had to go through what I did to get this book into your hands. In fact, there were many other ways I could have learned those lessons—and they could have been learned without excruciating pain. Yet I cannot deny that somehow my experiences also turned me into who I am and resulted in this book being in your hands today. Multiple things can be true at the same time.”
― Laura E. Anderson, When Religion Hurts You: Healing from Religious Trauma and the Impact of High-Control Religion

“Sin is no longer about having the wrong religious methods or customs. If that were true then Jesus was guilty of sin for breaking the Sabbath, breaking fasts, and breaking lots of purity laws by touching the sick, eating and drinking with sinners, and conversing with Gentile women. Jesus radically redefined sin in his day as simply that which is unjust and harms others.”
― Aaron Van Voorhis, A Survival Guide for Heretics

“The fossil record clearly shows that millions of years before humans existed, suffering and death did. Long before us asteroids were striking the earth, causing mass extinctions. Predation and disease have existed for as long as living things have. When modern humans came on the scene, approximately 200,000 years ago, we too were in a vicious struggle for survival against nature and each other. Humanity has never existed in some kind of pre-fallen, utopian world devoid of violence, suffering, and death. Therefore, humanity is not to blame for why these things exist.”
― Aaron Van Voorhis, A Survival Guide for Heretics

“Do you know why deconstructing from religion often feels like you are destroying yourself?

Because very early, they gave you their identity and you accepted it.

In deconstruction, this identity will be destroyed first.

So, yes, you are destroying your pseudo-self so that your real self will emerge.”
― Chidi Ejeagba

“You wrote me and all these other people into a story that robbed us of our free will. These past few weeks, I felt like someone was forcing me to do things I didn't want to do, feel things I didn't want to believe. As if an unseen force was guiding my every movement. You turned us from people into characters with stories that you predetermined. You were playing with our lives without even knowing it. And you put us in terrible danger.”
― Ellen Oh, The Colliding Worlds of Mina Lee

“Too often when a person's experience and the standard interpretation of Scripture don't add up we immediately blame the person instead of interrogating our understanding of Scripture. It is far easier to believe that someone else is wrong or does not have enough faith than it is to face the truth that it's possible that our interpretation doesn't match how reality works.”
― Josh Scott, Context

“You can't stop people from things that hurt and are hard, Stella. You can't reroute to avoid pain at all costs. You can't plan your way around everything. Sometimes, you just have to go through with it. Sometimes, there's no other way, okay?”
― Morgan Matson, Promchanted

“Superheroes are like...a Band-Aid, right? Slapped over symptoms of a way bigger problem. But they don't heal the symptoms. Just hide 'em.' Whether it's Superemacy or poverty and drugs and everything else Jav blogs about, it can't be fixed by beating people up in the street. Wild that anyone thinks that's a solution. 'Lyss, you wanna be a real hero, then forget all that crime-fighting bull. Stay here, help folks who really need it. Plenty of them around Bridgebrook. Do—I dunno, social work and soup kitchens. It's not as glam, but it does way more good.”
― B.L. Radley, Strictly No Heroics

“Religious trauma resides in our bodies and nervous systems in the same way that trauma from war, developmental trauma, or sexualized trauma live inside us. Though the triggers and environment of the original trauma may differ, how religious trauma lives in our bodies, on a physiological level, is the same.”
― Laura E. Anderson, When Religion Hurts You: Healing from Religious Trauma and the Impact of High-Control Religion

“I have called a truce with the unknown, and I am learning to live with the disquiet. I do not attempt to pray to a god who will not answer.”
― Amber Scorah, Leaving the Witness: Exiting a Religion and Finding a Life