Jacques Derrida Quotes

I was a student at Peking University for close to a decade, while a so-called 'knowledge explosion' was rapidly expanding. I was searching for not just knowledge, but also to mold a temperament, to cultivate a scholarly outlook.

In academic life, false ideas are merely false, and useless ones can be fun to play with.

It has been a privilege to pursue knowledge for its own sake and to see how it might help mankind in more practical ways.

When I arrived at Harvard, I wanted to design a course in political theory that would have interested me, back when I was started out, in a way that the standard things didn't.

Here I was into astronomy, and here into anthropology, and there I go into geology. It was much more fun to be able to research and write about whatever I wanted to.

What I would really like to do is live in a university town and be an intellectual bum. I just want to write, read, whatever. I'm very eclectic. I read every night until my eyes burn.

When I came up to Cambridge (in October 1921) to read economics, I did not have much idea of what it was about.

Liberal learning is both a safeguard against false ideas of freedom and a source of true ones.

Scholarship is to be created not by compulsion, but by awakening a pure interest in knowledge.

I do what I do because my favorite thing is to learn.

I studied art history and philosophy and took economics and political science classes. I just took whatever I wanted and I didn't worry about grades and I read and learned a lot, and I didn't have much of a social life, so it was deeply absorbing.

Thirst was made for water; inquiry for truth. What you now call the free play of inquiry has neither more nor less to do with the ends for which intelligence was given you than masturbation has to do with marriage.

Freedom of inquiry, freedom of discussion, and freedom of teaching - without these a university cannot exist.

When a peasant begins to feel the need for instruction, he usually becomes fiercely calculating.

The non-fiction bestseller lists frequently prove that we all want to know more about everything, even if we didn't know that we wanted to know - we're just waiting for the right person to come along and tell us about it.

She got on with her education. In her opinion, school kept on trying to interfere with it.

If this nation is to be wise as well as strong, if we are to achieve our destiny, then we need more new ideas for more wise men reading more good books in more public libraries.

...The peculiar air of Oxford-the air of liberty to care for the things of the mind assured and secured by machinery which is in itself a satisfaction to sense.

It is always the task of the intellectual to "think otherwise." This is not just a perverse idiosyncrasy. It is an absolutely essential feature of a society.

What is wonderful about a university like LSE is that you not only receive teaching of very high quality, you also learn where to find the knowledge you are seeking. And you make unexpected discoveries; it was a Marxist professor who introduced me to the work of Cardinal Newman, a great master of English prose as well as theology.

The world's greatest thinkers have often been amateurs; for high thinking is the outcome of fine and independent living, and for that a professional chair offers no special opportunities.

Meek young men grow up in colleges and believe it is their duty to accept the views which books have given, and grow up slaves.

All of the top achievers I know are life-long learners. Looking for new skills, insights, and ideas. If they're not learning, they're not growing and not moving toward excellence.

The creative mind is the playful mind. Philosophy is the play and dance of ideas.

To be wise is to be eternally curious.