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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 law and its 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 (1972)

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More quotes by Jacques Derrida

I am one of those marranes who no longer say they are Jews even in the secret of their own hearts.

Circumcision, that’s all I’ve ever talked about.

The disciple must break the glass, or better the mirror, the reflection, his infinite speculation on the master. And start to speak.

Writing and Difference (1978)

Monsters cannot be announced. One cannot say: 'here are our monsters', without immediately turning the monsters into pets.

Deconstruction never had meaning or interest, at least in my eyes, than as a radicalization, that is to say, also within the tradition of a certain Marxism, in a certain spirit of Marxism.

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Jacques Derrida (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.