text:
Jacques Derrida

Jacques Derrida (15 July 1930 – 8 October 2004) was a French philosopher who introduced the practice of "deconstruction".

Quotes

 * Il n'y a pas de hors-texte.
 * Of Grammatology (1967). G. Spivak translated this as "There is nothing outside the text," which Derrida opponents have characterized to mean that nothing exists but language. Later scholarship has translated it as "There is no outside-of-text" or "There is nothing free of context," i.e. all experience is mediated by interpretation.

 * At the end of Being and Nothingness, ... Being in-itself and Being for-itself were of Being; and this totality of beings, in which they were effected, itself was linked up to itself, relating and appearing to itself, by means of the essential project of human-reality. What was named in this way, in an allegedly neutral and undetermined way, was nothing other than the metaphysical unity of man and God, the relation of man to God, the project of becoming God as the project constituting human-reality. Atheism changes nothing in this fundamental structure.
 * "The Ends of Man," Margins of Philosophy, tr. w/ notes by Alan Bass. The University of Chicago Press. Chicago, 1982. (original French published in Paris, 1972, as Marges de la philosophie). p. 116

 * The end of man (as a factual anthropological limit) is announced to thought from the vantage of the end of man (as a determined opening or the infinity of a telos). Man is that which is in relation to his end, in the fundamentally equivocal sense of the word. Since always.
 * "The Ends of Man," Margins of Philosophy, tr. w/ notes by Alan Bass. The University of Chicago Press. Chicago, 1982. (original French published in Paris, 1972, as Marges de la philosophie). p. 123

 * What is called "objectivity," scientific for instance (in which I firmly believe, in a given situation) imposes itself only within a context which is extremely vast, old, firmly established, or rooted in a network of conventions … and yet which still remains a context.
 * Limited Inc (1977)

 * As soon as we cease to believe in such an engineer and in a discourse which breaks with the received historical discourse, and as soon as we admit that every finite discourse is bound by a certain bricolage and that the engineer and the scientist are also species of bricoleurs, then the very idea of bricolage is menaced and the difference in which it took on its meaning breaks down.
 * "Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences," Writing and Difference, tr. w/ intro & notes by Alan Bass. The University of Chicago Press. Chicago, 1978. p. 285

 * Monsters cannot be announced. One cannot say: 'here are our monsters', without immediately turning the monsters into pets.
 * Some Statements and Truisms about Neologisms, Newisms, Postisms, Parasitisms, and other small Seismisms, The States of Theory, ed. David Carroll, New York: Columbia University Press, 1989.

 * Circumcision, that’s all I’ve ever talked about.
 * "Circumfession." In Jacques Derrida, eds. G. Bennington & J. Derrida, trans. G. Bennington. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993, p. 70

 * I am one of those marranes who no longer say they are Jews even in the secret of their own hearts.
 * "Circumfession." In Jacques Derrida, eds. G. Bennington & J. Derrida, trans. G. Bennington. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993, p. 170

 * No one gets angry at a mathematician or a physicist whom he or she doesn't understand at all, or at someone who speaks a foreign language, but rather at someone who tampers with your own language, with this 'relation,' precisely, which is yours.
 * Derrida Jacques, Elisabeth Weber (1995), Points...: Interviews, 1974-1994. p. 115

 * 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.
 * Specters of Marx. Routledge, 1994. p. 115

 * Amy Kofman: Have you read all the books in here? Derrida: No, only four of them. But I read those very, very carefully.
 * Derrida (2003 documentary), referring to his personal library

Writing and Difference (1978)

 * If it recedes one day, leaving behind its works and signs on the shores of our civilization, the structuralist invasion might become a question or the historian of ideas, or perhaps even an object. But the historian would be deceived if he came to this pass: by the very act of considering the structuralist invasion as an object he would forget its meaning and would forget that what is at stake, first of all, is an adventure of vision, a conversion of the way of putting questions to any object posed before us, to historical objects-his own- in particular. And, unexpectedly among these, the literary objects.
 * Force and Signification
 * Whatever the poverty of our knowledge in this respect, it is certain that the question of the sign is itself more or less, or in any event something other, than a sign of the times. To dream of reducing it to a sign of the times is to dream of violence.
 * Force and Signification
 * By virtue of its innermost intention, and like all questions about language, structuralism escapes the classical history of ideas which already supposes structuralism’s possibility, for the latter naively belongs to the province of language and propounds itself within it.Nevertheless, by virtue of an irreducible region of irreflection and spontaneity within it, by virtue of the essential shadow of the undeclared, the structuralist phenomenon will deserve examination by the historian of ideas. For better or for worse. Everything within this phenomenon that does not in itself transparently belong to the question of the sign will merit this scrutiny; as will everything within it that is methodologically effective, thereby possessing the kind of infallibil-ity now ascribed to sleepwalkers and formerly attributed to instinct, which was said to be as certain as it was blind.
 * Force and Signification
 * This book, admirable in so many respects, power in its break and style, is even more intimidating for me in that, having formely had the good fortune to study under Michel Foucault, I retain the consciousness of an admiring and grateful disciple. Now, the disciple's consciousness, when he starts, I would not say to dispute, but to engage in dialogue with the master or, better, to articulate the interminable and silent dialogue which made him into a disciple-this disciple's consciousness is an unhappy consciousness.
 * Cogito and The History of Madness (Routledge classics edition)
 * The disciple must break the glass, or better the mirror, the reflection, his infinite speculation on the master. And start to speak.
 * Cogito and The History of Madness, p.37 (Routledge classics edition)
 * In writing a history of madness, Foucault has attempted-and this is the greatest merit, but also the very infeasibility of his book-to write a history of madness itself. Itself. Of madness itself. That is by letting madness speak for itself.
 * Cogito and The History of Madness, p.37 (Routledge classics edition)
 * The history of metaphysics, like the history of the West, is the history of these metaphors and metonymies. It’s matrix—If you will pardon me for demonstrating so little and for being elliptical in order to come more quickly to my principle theme—is the determination of Being as presence in all sense of this word.
 * Structure, Sign and Play

Dissemination (1972)

 * 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.
 * Plato's Pharmacy, intro
 * The dissimulation of the woven texture can in any case take centuries to undo its web: a web that envelops a web, undoing the web for centuries; reconstituting it too as an organism, indefinitely regenerating its own tissue behind the cutting trace, the decision of each reading. There is always a surprise in store for the anatomy or physiology of any criticism that might think it had mastered the game, surveyed all the threads at once, deluding itself, too, in wanting to look at the text without touching it, without laying a hand on the "object," without risking- which is the only chance of entering into the game, by getting a few fingers caught- the addition of some new thread.
 * Plato's Pharmacy
 * In writing what he does not speak, what he would never say and, in truth, would probably never even think, the author of the written speech is already entrenched in the posture of the sophist; the man of non-presence and non-truth. Writing is thus already on the scene. The incompatibility between written and the true is clearly announced at the moment Socrates starts to recount the way in which men are carried out themselves by pleasure, become absent from themselves, forget themselves and die in the thrill of song.
 * Plato's Pharmacy, Pharmacia

Positions (1982)

 * Jacques Derrida (1982), Positions University of Chicago Press, 15 nov. 1982 With interviews with Henri Ronse (p. 1-14), with Julia Kristeva (pp. 15-36), and with Jean-Louis Houdebine and Guy Scarpetta (p. 37-97)

 * 1) Différance is the systematic play of differences, of the traces of differences, of the spacing by means of which elements are related to each other. This spacing is the simultaneously active and passive (the a of différance indicates this indecision as concerns activity and passivity, that which cannot be governed by or distributed between the terms of this opposition) production of the intervals without which the "full" terms would not signify, would not function.
 * p. 21

 * Although Saussure recognized the necessity of putting the phonic substance between brackets ("What is essential in language, we shall see, is foreign to the phonic character of the linguistic sign" [p. 21]. "In its essence it [the linguistic signifier] is not at all phonic" [p. 164]), Saussure, for essential, and essentially metaphysical, reasons had to privilege speech, everything that links the sign to phone. He also speaks of the "natural link" between thought and voice, meaning and sound (p. 46). He even speaks of "thought-sound" (p. 156). I have attempted elsewhere to show what is traditional in such a gesture, and to what necessities it submits. In any event, it winds up contradicting the most interesting critical motive of the Course, making of linguistics the regulatory model, the "pattern" for a general semiology of which it was to be, by all rights and theoretically, only a part. The theme of the arbitrary, thus, is turned away from its most fruitful paths (formalization) toward a hierarchizing teleology:... One finds exactly the same gesture and the same concepts in Hegel. The contradiction between these two moments of the Course is also marked by Saussure's recognizing elsewhere that "it is not spoken language that is natural to man, but the faculty of constituting a language, that is, a system of distinct signs … ," that is, the possibility of the code and of articulation, independent of any substance, for example, phonic substance.
 * p. 21

 * 2) "the a of différance also recalls that spacing is temporization, the detour and postponement by means of which intuition, perception, consummation - in a word, the relationship to the present, the reference to a present reality, to a being - are always deferred. Deferred by virtue of the very principle of difference which holds that an element functions and signifies, takes on or conveys meaning, only by referring to another past or future element in an economy of traces. This economic aspect of différance, which brings into play a certain not conscious calculation in a field of forces, is inseparable from the more narrowly semiotic aspect of différance.
 * p. 28

 * It is also the becoming-space of the spoken chain - which has been called temporal or linear; a becoming-space which makes possible both writing and every correspondence between speech and writing, every passage from one to the other. The activity or productivity connoted by the a of différance refers to the generative movement in the play of differences. The latter are neither fallen from the sky nor inscribed once and for all in a closed system, a static structure that a synchronic and taxonomic operation could exhaust. Differences are the effects of transformations, and from this vantage the theme of différance is incompatible with the static, synchronic, taxonomic, ahistoric motifs in the concept of structure.
 * p. 28

 * At the point at which the concept of différance, and the chain attached to it, intervenes, all the conceptual oppositions of metaphysics (signifier/signified; sensible/intelligible; writing/speech; passivity/activity; etc.)- to the extent that they ultimately refer to the presence of something present (for example, in the form of the identity of the subject who is present for all his operations, present beneath every accident or event, self-present in its "living speech," in its enunciations, in the present objects and acts of its language, etc.)- become non pertinent. They all amount, at one moment or another, to a subordination of the movement of différance in favor of the presence of a value or a meaning supposedly antecedent to différance, more original than it, exceeding and governing it in the last analysis. This is still the presence of what we called above the "transcendental signified.
 * p. 29

 * When I say that this phase is necessary, the word phase is perhaps not the most rigorous one. It is not a question of a chronological phase, a given moment, or a page that one day simply will be turned, in order to go on to other things. The necessity of this phase is structural; it is the necessity of an interminable analysis: the hierarchy of dual oppositions always reestablishes itself. Unlike those authors whose death does not await their demise, the time for overturning is never a dead letter.
 * p. 41-42

Specters of Marx (1993)

 * To live, by definition, is not something one learns. Not from oneself, it is not learned from life, taught by life. Only from the other and by death. In any case from the other at the edge of life. At the internal border or the external border, it is a heterodidactics between life and death.
 * Exordium

 * It has no sense and cannot just unless it comes to terms with death. Mine as (well as) that of the other. Between life and death, then, this is indeed the place of a sententious injunction that always feigns to speak the just.
 * Exordium
 * Oh. Marx's love for Shakespeare! It is well known. Chris Hani shared the same passion. I have just learned this and I like the idea. Even though Marx more often quotes Timon of Athens, the Manifesto seems to evoke or convoke, right from the start, the first coming of the silent ghost, the apparition of the spirit that does not answer, on those ramparts of Elsinore which is then the old Europe.
 * Injunctions of Marx
 * No text in the tradition seems as lucid concerning the way in which the political is becoming worldwide. concerning the irreducibility of the technical and the media in the current of the most thinking thought-and this goes beyond the railroad and the newspapers of the time whose powers were analyzed in such an incomparable way in the Manifesto. And few texts have shed so much light on law. international law. and nationalism.
 * Injunctions of Marx
 * Nevertheless, among all the temptations I will have to resist today. There would be the temptation of memory: to recount what was for me, and for those of my generation who shared it during a whole lifetime. The experience of Marxism. The quasi-paternal figure of Marx, the way it fought in us with other filiations, the reading of texts and the interpretation of a world in which the Marxist inheritance was-and still remains, and so it will remain-absolutely and thoroughly determinate. One need not be a Marxist or a communist in order to accept this obvious fact. We all live in a world, some would say a culture, that still bears, at an incalculable depth, the mark of this inheritance, whether in a directly visible fashion or not.
 * Injunctions of Marx
 * How can one be late to the end of history? A question for today. It is serious because it obliges one to reflect again, as we have been doing since Hegel, on what happens and deserves the name of event, after history; it obliges one to wonder if the end of history is but the end of a certain concept of history.
 * Injunctions of Marx
 * No differeance without alterity, no alterity without singularity, no singularity without here-now.
 * Injunctions of Marx, p,31
 * In order to try to remove what we are going to say from what risks happening, if we judge by the many signs, to Marx's work today, which is to say also to his injunction. What risks happening is that one will try to play Marx off against Marxism so as to neutralize, or at any rate muffle the political imperative in the untroubled exegesis of a classified work. One can sense a coming fashion or stylishness in this regard in the culture and more precisely in the university. And what is there to worry about here? Why fear what may also become a cushioning operation? This recent stereotype would be destined, whether one wishes it or not, to depoliticize profoundly the Marxist reference, to do its best, by putting on a tolerant face, to neutralize a potential force, first of all by enervating a corpus, by silencing in it the revolt [the return is acceptable provided that the revolt, which initially inspired uprising, indignation, insurrection, revolutionary momentum, does not come back]. People would be ready to accept the return of Marx or the return to Marx, on the condition that a silence is maintained about Marx's injunction not just to decipher but to act and to make the deciphering [the interpretation] into a transformation that "changes the world. In the name of an old concept of reading, such an ongoing neutralization would attempt to conjure away a danger: now that Marx is dead, and especially now that Marxism seems to be in rapid decomposition, some people seem to say, we are going to be able to concern ourselves with Marx without being bothered-by the Marxists and, why not, by Marx himself, that is, by a ghost that goes on speaking. We'll treat him calmly, objectively, without bias: according to the academic rules, in the University, in the library, in colloquia! We'll do it systematically, by respecting the norms of hermeneutical, philological, philosophical exegesis. If one listens closely, one already hears whispered: "Marx, you see, was despite everything a philosopher like any other; what is more [and one can say this now that so many Marxists have fallen silent], he was a great-philosopher who deserves to figure on the list of those works we assign for study and from which he has been banned for too long.29 He doesn't belong to the communists, to the Marxists, to the parties-, he ought to figure within our great canon of Western political philosophy. Return to Marx, let's finally read him as a great philosopher." We have heard this and we will hear it again.
 * Injunctions of Marx
 * The time is out of joint. The world is going badly. It is worn but its wear no longer counts. Old age or youth-one no longer counts in that way. The world has more than one age. We lack the measure of the measure. We no longer realize the wear, we no longer take account of it as of a single age in the progress of history. Neither maturation, nor crisis, nor even agony. Something else. What is happening is happening to age itself, it strikes a blow at the teleological order of history. What is coming, in which the untimely appears, is happening to time but it does not happen in time. Contretemps. The time is out of joint. Theatrical speech, Hamlet's speech before the theater of the world, of history, and of politics. The age is off its hinges. Everything, beginning with time, seems out of kilter, unjust, dis-adjusted. The world is going very badly, it wears as it grows, as the Painter also says at the beginning of Timon of Athens (which is Marx's play, is it not). For, this time, it is a painter's speech, as if he were speaking of a spectacle or before a tableau: "How goes the world?-It wears, sir, as it grows.
 * Wear and Tears (tableu of a ageless world)
 * If , there is a tendency in all Western democracies no longer to respect the professional politician or even the party member as such, it is no longer only because of some personal insufficiency, some fault, or some incompetence, or because of some scandal that can now be more widely known, amplified, and in fact often produced, if not premeditated by the power of the media. Rather, it is because politicians become more and more, or even solely characters in the media's representation at the very moment when the transformation of the public space, precisely by the media, causes them to lose the essential part of the power and even of the competence they were granted before by the structures of parliamentary representation, by the party apparatuses that were linked to it, and so forth. However competent they may personally be, professional politicians who conform to the old model tend today to become structurally incompetent. The same media power accuses, produces, and amplifies at the same time this incompetence of traditional politicians: on the one hand, it takes aways from them the legitimate power they held in the former political space (party, parliament, and so forth), but, on the other hand, it obliges them to become mere silhouettes, if not marionettes, on the stage of televisual rhetoric. They were thought to be actors of politics, they now often risk, as everyone knows, being no more than TV actors.
 * Wear and Tears (tableu of a ageless world)

The Animal That Therefore I Am (1997)

 * Text of Derrida's ten-hour address to the 1997 Crisy conference entitled The Autobiographical Animal. Published in French as L'animal que donc je suis (2006). Edited by Marie-Louise Mallet; translated by David Wills (New York: Fordham University Press, 2008. ISBN 978-0-8232-2790-7

 * No one can deny the suffering, fear, or panic, the terror or fright that can seize certain animals and that we humans can witness. … No doubt either, then, of there being within us the possibility of giving vent to a surge of compassion, even if it is then misunderstood, repressed, or denied, held at bay. … The two centuries I have been referring to somewhat casually in order to situate the present in terms of this tradition have been those of an unequal struggle, a war (whose inequality could one day be reversed) being waged between, on the one hand, those who violate not only animal life but even and also this sentiment of compassion, and, on the other hand, those who appeal for an irrefutable testimony to this pity. War is waged over the matter of pity. This war is probably ageless but, and here is my hypothesis, it is passing through a critical phase. We are passing through that phase, and it passes through us. To think the war we find ourselves waging is not only a duty, a responsibility, an obligation, it is also a necessity, a constraint that, like it or not, directly or indirectly, no one can escape. Henceforth more than ever. And I say “to think” this war, because I believe it concerns what we call “thinking.” The animal looks at us, and we are naked before it. Thinking perhaps begins there.

 * Confined within this catch-all concept, within this vast encampment of the animal, in this general singular, within the strict enclosure of this definite article (“the Animal” and not “animals”), as in a virgin forest, a zoo, a hunting or fishing ground, a paddock or an abattoir, a space of domestication, are all the living things that man does not recognize as his fellows, his neighbors, or his brothers.

 * There is no Animal in the general singular, separated from man by a single, indivisible limit. We have to envisage the existence of “living creatures,” whose plurality cannot be assembled within the single figure of an animality that is simply opposed to humanity. … The confusion of all nonhuman living creatures within the general and common category of the animal is not simply a sin against rigorous thinking, vigilance, lucidity, or empirical authority, it is also a crime. Not a crime against animality, precisely, but a crime of the first order against the animals, against animals.

Quotes about Derrida

 * Derrida’s work emerged from the tradition of Husserl and Heidegger, and although it has proved catching in some circles, it is not easily assimilated by people used to normal expressions of thought.
 * Simon Blackburn (2008), Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy (Second Edition, Revised), Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0-19-954143-0, p. 95

 * Contrary to the claims of Derrida’s more careless critics, the passion of deconstruction is deeply political, for deconstruction is a relentless, if sometimes indirect, discourse on democracy, on a democracy to come. Derrida’s democracy is a radically pluralistic polity that resists the terror of an organic, ethnic, spiritual unity, of the natural, native bonds of the nation (natus, natio), which grind to dust everything that is not a kin of the ruling kind and genus (Geschlecht). He dreams of a nation without nationalist or nativist closure, of a community without identity, of a non-identical community that cannot say I or we, for, after all, the very idea of a community is to fortify (munis, muneris) ourselves in common against the other. His work is driven by a sense of the consummate danger of an identitarian community, of the spirit of the “we” of “Christian Europe,” or of a “Christian politics,” lethal compounds that spell death of Arabs and Jews, for Africans and Asians, for anything other. The heaving and sighing of this Christian European spirit is a lethal air for Jews and Arabs, for all les juifs [Jews as archetypal outcasts], even if they go back to father Abraham, a way of gassing them according to both the letter and the spirit.
 * John D. Caputo (1997). The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida: Religion without Religion. Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, pp. 231–232

 * In one of his last meetings with Jacques Derrida, the French-Jewish philosopher, Emmanuel Levinas 1906-1995),[sic] is said to have asked Derrida to confess that he was in fact a modern day representative of the Lurianic Kabbalah.
 * Sanford L. Drob (2006) "Jacques Derrida and the Kabbalah"

 * Derrida’s special significance lies not in the fact that he was subversive, but in the fact that he was an outright intellectual fraud -- and that he managed to dupe a startling number of highly educated people into believing that he was onto something. […] whatever Derrida is affirming he is also simultaneously denying. From a logical perspective, the only way to read Derrida on his own terms is mentally to insert the phrase “or not” after every one of his statements.
 * Mark Goldblatt, “The Derrida Achievement,” The American Spectator, 14 October 2004

 * Derrida has been assuming all along that the linguistic processes described by Saussure, signification and the differencing of signs, act like forces. If so, then there is no reason for them to stop, and each sign evoked by difference will introduce a new set of differences. But there is no justification for making Saussure's signifiers and differences into forces, and indeed, there is no longer any justification for Saussure's signifiers and differences. Justification or no, language for Derrida lacks the stability that Saussure found. Saussure's neat pairings of signifier and signified came from a finite system of distinctive features. By contrast, Derrida's signifier and signified go on and on in endless differencing or differing or deferring (all terms involved in Derrida's own word, différance). And since our minds only work in signs, and nothing is ever fully present in signs, everything becomes flickering and unstable, both present and absent, present and future. It follows therefore that human beings are not the master of language, since the forces of language cannot be mastered. I try to mean, but my meaning is dispersed, divided, at odds with itself. Indeed, I myself am one of my meanings, as much a fiction, as little a stable entity as they. In Terry Eagleton's phrasing, "Because language is the very air I breathe, I can never have a pure, unblemished meaning or experience at all." Wow! With one masterful stroke, Derrida seems to have gotten rid of meaning, structures, categories, and mankind itself. Yet the whole argument rests on the idea of signification. As Eagleton sums the position up, "If the theory of signification . . . is at all valid, then there is something in writing itself which finally evades all systems and logics." But that's the trouble. It is not valid. Saussure's is finally a flat earth theory. If we consider only how the hearing and the understanding of a word feel to us, if we only introspect, his account has a certain commonsensical appeal. It seems right, just as the horizon seems to define a flat earth. A better linguistics, though, and a great deal of psychological evidence show that Saussure's theory leaves out a world of complexities. The text-active model leaves out all of human activity in interpreting language or the world. So does Derrida.
 * Norman N. Holland (1992), The Critical I NY: Columbia University Press, pp. 154-155

 * Anyone who has heard [Derrida] lecture in French knows that he is more performance artist than logician. His flamboyant style--using free association, rhymes and near-rhymes, puns, and maddening digressions--is not just a vain pose (though it is surely that). It reflects what he calls a self-conscious "acommunicative strategy" for combating logocentrism.
 * Mark Lilla, Review of Derrida's Moscou Aller-Retour in The New York Review of Books, June, 1998

 * Oriental religions had proposed the idea of a supreme Being beyond the grasp of language. But Greek thinkers were so wont to identify the real and the conceivable with what can be said that they dared not state there is an unintelligible reality; therefore, they made it into a non-being, thus originating the ontology of absence whose latest versions are Heidegger’s Being (always placed beyond positive existence) and its semiotic child, Derridian difference or ‘trace,’ forever avoiding presence and identify. The usefulness of such comparisons show that, for all the novelty of his terminology, the thought structure of Derrida is a philosophical antique with a more theological than epistemological origin -- something that may remain concealed to those who broach deconstruction theory as thought it were just conceptually sharpened semiotics.
 * J.G. Merquior (1986). From Paris to Prague: A Critique of Structuralist and Poststructualist Thought. London: Verso, ISBN 0-86091-129-2, p. 224

 * [T]he tenor of Derridian philosophy shares with Heidegger’s a dangerous proclivity towards the bombastic translations of problems of being and knowledge into strident moral dilemmas. Like the cosmic drama of Being repressed by being in Heidegger, Derrida’s protests against phonocentrism sound more like lay sermonizing than genuine analytical argument. Those manichean dichotomies -- Being verses being, ‘writing’ verses phoné -- betray a religious pattern of thought that leaves Derrida -- for all his reticence regarding eschatology -- infinitely closer to the prophet Levinas than to the cool-headed practice of philosophy as analysis. Once removed from this original ‘theological’ and mystical framework, the Derridian ontology of absence makes for an irrationalist philosophy, as was the case with Heidegger. Hence the blatent non-sequiturs. […] Logical jumps are dictated by by the obsessional nature of dramatic philosophy, that is, where the glamour of a manichean grand-guignol (Presence the goodie versus absence the goodie) is substituted for analytics rigour.
 * J.G. Merquior (1986). From Paris to Prague: A Critique of Structuralist and Poststructualist Thought. London: Verso, ISBN 0-86091-129-2, pp 226-227

 * In most later essays by Derrida, oracular assertion by dint of jocular or half-jocular pun-juggling has come to replace argument almost completely.
 * J.G. Merquior (1986). From Paris to Prague: A Critique of Structuralist and Poststructualist Thought. London: Verso, ISBN 0-86091-129-2, p. 228

 * Saussure sets out to conceptualize a proper way of describing language, not the nature of language to reality. Consequently, he can hardly provide a linguistic pedigree to Derrida’s philosophizing about that relation.
 * J.G. Merquior (1986). From Paris to Prague: A Critique of Structuralist and Poststructualist Thought. London: Verso, ISBN 0-86091-129-2, p. 231

 * Deconstruction, in particular, is a fairly formulaic process that hardly merits the commotion that it has generated. However, like hack writers or television producers, academics will use a formula if it does the job and they are not held to any higher standard (though perhaps Derrida can legitimately claim some credit for originality in inventing the formula in the first place).
 * Chip Morningstar, "How to Deconstruct Almost Anything" Wired, June 1993.

 * I don't like anything that sets itself up as an in-group or an elite, whether it is the Bloomsbury group or Derrida.
 * Martha Nussbaum, as quoted by Boynton, Robert S. Who Needs Philosophy? A Profile of Martha Nussbaum in The New York Times Magazine.

 * [Derrida is] simply not worth studying for someone who has been studying [W. V. O.] Quine and [Hilary] Putnam and [Donald] Davidson.
 * Martha Nussbaum, Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1997, p 41

 * Those who hurled themselves after Derrida were not the most sophisticated but the most pretentious, and least creative members of my generation of academics. [...] Lacan, Derrida and Foucault are the perfect prophets for the weak, anxious academic personality, trapped in verbal formulas and perennially defeated by circumstances. They offer a self-exculpating cosmic explanation for the normal professorial state of resentment, alienation, dithering passivity and inaction.
 * Camille Paglia, "Junk Bonds and Corporate Raiders : Academe in the Hour of the Wolf", first published in Arion, Spring 1991, reprinted in Paglia's Sex, Art and American Culture : New Essays (1992), ISBN ISBN 9780679741015

 * Jacques Derrida, the father of the pseudo-philosophy of "Deconstructionism", has been deconstructed into the next world. He had been conducting a terminal "narrative" with cancer. Well, at least that is the subjective unproven conclusion we have, since, after all, how do we really know that death and cancer exist? [...] Derrida was one of the fathers of this school of Deconstructionism. He was best known for his attack on "logocentrism," that is, on the cruel oppression by rational thinking. (What a great guru for the humanities departments at your university!) He even dismissed Stalin as a logocentrist, which explains I guess why those Gulags and Red Terror ruined what otherwise would be the great blessings of Marxism. In short, we should all seek salvation through resistance to logic. What a great excuse not to do your homework!
 * Steven Plaut, "The Deconstruction of Jacques Derrida," Front Page Magazine, 11 October 2004

 * [John Searle is] right in saying that a lot of Derrida's arguments … are just awful.
 * Richard Rorty, "Essays on Heidegger and Others", (Philosophical Papers II, Cambridge : Cambridge, University Press, 1991), pp. 94-95.

 * Derrida has a distressing penchant for saying things that are obviously false.
 * John Searle (1977). “Reiterating the Differences: A Reply to Derrida”, Glyph 1:198-208

 * On the face of it, this claim [i.e., Derrida's thesis that speech is privileged over writing] is bizarre. The distinction between speech and writing is simply not very important to Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Descartes, Kant, Spinoza, Leibniz, Hume, etc. And of these listed, the only one about whom Derrida offers any evidence for the privileging of the spoken is Plato, who, in Phaedrus, made a few remarks about the impossibility of subjecting written texts to interrogation. Plato points out, correctly, that you can ask questions of a speaking person in a way that you cannot of a written text. On Derrida's account, however, it is essential not only to Husserl, but to philosophy, and indeed to "the history of the world during an entire epoch," including the present, that speech should be mistakenly privileged over writing. If Derrida's claim were to be taken at its face value, I believe that a contrary argument could be given equal or even greater plausibility. From the medieval development of Aristotle's logic through Leibniz's Characteristica Universalis through Frege and Russell and up to the present development of symbolic logic, it could be argued that exactly the reverse is the case; that by emphasizing logic and rationality, philosophers have tended to emphasize written language as the more perspicuous vehicle of logical relations. Indeed, as far as the present era in philosophy is concerned, it wasn't until the 1950s that serious claims were made on behalf of the ordinary spoken vernacular languages, against the written ideal symbolic languages of mathematical logic. When Derrida makes sweeping claims about "the history of the world during an entire epoch," the effect is not so much apocalyptic as simply misinformed.
 * John Searle, "Word Turned Upside Down." New York Review of Books, Volume 30, Number 16 · October 27, 1983.

 * [W]e can now give a general assessment of the deconstruction of the distinction between speech and writing. 1. Derrida's eccentric reading of the history of Western philosophy, a reading according to which philosophers are supposed to be roundly condemning writing, while privileging spoken language, is not grounded on an actual reading of the texts of the leading figures in the philosophical tradition. Derrida only discusses three major figures in any detail: Plato, Rousseau, and Husserl. Rather it seems motivated by his conviction that everything in logocentrism hinges on this issue. If he can treat the features of a suitably redefined notion of writing as definitive of the issues that philosophy has been concerned with —- as definitive of truth, reality, etc.-— then he thinks he can deconstruct these notions. 2. The proof that speech is really writing, that writing is prior to speech, is based on a redefinition. By such methods one can prove anything. One can prove that the rich are really poor, the true is really false, etc. The only interest that such an effort might have is in the reasons given for the redefinition. 3. Derrida's redefinition of writing to "reform" the "vulgar concept" is not based on any actual empirical study of the similarities and differences of the two forms. Nothing of the sort. He makes nothing of the fact that speech is spoken and writing is written, for example, or of the fact that, in consequence, written texts tend to persist throughout time in a way that is not characteristic of spoken utterances. Rather, the redefinition is based on a misrepresentation of the way the system of differences functions, and the misrepresentation is not innocent.' It is designed to enable the apparatus of writing, so characterized, to be applied quite generally—to experience, to reality, etc. Michel Foucault once characterized Derrida's prose style to me as "obscurantisme terroriste." The text is written so obscurely that you can't figure out exactly what the thesis is (hence "obscurantisme") and then when one criticizes it, the author says, "Vous m'avez mal compris; vous êtes idiot" [roughly, "You misunderstood me; you are an idiot"] (hence "terroriste").
 * John Searle, "Word Turned Upside Down." New York Review of Books, Volume 30, Number 16 · October 27, 1983.

 * Many French philosophers see in M. Derrida only cause for silent embarrassment, his antics having contributed significantly to the widespread impression that contemporary French philosophy is little more than an object of ridicule. M. Derrida's voluminous writings in our view stretch the normal forms of academic scholarship beyond recognition. Above all -- as every reader can very easily establish for himself (and for this purpose any page will do) -- his works employ a written style that defies comprehension.
 * Barry Smith et al. "Open letter against Derrida receiving an honorary doctorate from Cambridge University", The Times (London), Saturday, May 9, 1992

title: Jacques Derrida


text:
Talk:Isaac Asimov

General sources/The Last Question
Why is so much text from the story included here? Seems like fluff--and is also a heck of a spoiler. 50.54.231.229 00:30, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

Defending beliefs to the death
"There is no belief, however foolish, that will not gather its faithful adherents who will defend it to the death." The stars in their courses - página 36, Isaac Asimov - White Lion, 1974, ISBN 085617145X, 9780856171451 - 199 páginas

Where is this from? It's a great quote, and I want to put it up, but I can't find a source for it and I'm not 100% sure it's legit. --Wikipedia:User:Leigh HoneywellChyna & Milawn

 * I have found no sources for it either, but find no one other than Asimov to whom it is attributed, and even if there were, without definite contradictory evidence it could go in the attributed section. I will add it to this now. ~ Kalki 22:18, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)

There is no belief, however foolish, that will not gather its faithful adherents who will defend it to the death. - The Stars in Their Courses (1974), p. 36

Duplicate quotes
There sure are a lot of duplicate quotes here.

how about this one:

Moyers: What happens to the idea of the dignity of the human species if population growth continues at its present rate?

Asimov: It will be completely destroyed. I will use what I call my bathroom metaphor. Two people live in an apartment and there are two bathrooms, then both have the freedom of the bathroom. You can go to the bathroom anytime you want, and stay as long as you want, for whatever you need. Everyone believes in the freedom of the bathroom. It should be right there in the Constitution. But if you have 20 people in the apartment and two bathrooms, no matter how much every person believes in the freedom of the bathroom, there is no such thing. You have to set up times for each person, you have to bang at the door, "Aren't you through yet?" and so on.

The same way democracy cannot survive overpopulation. Human dignity cannot survive it. Convenience and decency cannot survive it. As you put more and more people into the world, the value of life not only declines, it disappears. It doesn't matter if someone dies. The more people there are the less one individual matters.

Issac Asimov, quoted in A World of Ideas by Bill Moyers (May 26, 1989), p. 276 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.172.96.232 on 05:52, 21 March 2005 (UTC).

 * Note that the above citation is incorrect. I've added 2 correct sources (a transcript, page 6, and audio, 20:12) to the quotation in the article and moved it to the Sourced section. --82.171.70.54 14:49, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

The Last Refuge
I'm quite sure that instead of "Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent" it should be "Violence is the last resort of the incompetent".
 * The texts disagree. (BTW, please sign your talk page comments.)  121a0012 05:36, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

Foolish Beliefs
I disagree with the combination of the Flying Spaghetti Monster and that particular quote. Pastafarianism isn't a real religion, it's simply an argument to a point, mainly, "What's the difference between belief in God and belief in the FSM?" (there's the same amount of evidence for both: none). A more suitable combination would be some Scientology related image, as Asimov and L. Ron Hubbard were contemporaries, and he remarked more than once that Hubbard had gone astray with Dianetics. It's also more obvious that Scientology has devout believers who take it seriously.--24.83.231.43 00:04, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

I mean, come on, Pastafarianism is a satire that wasn't meant to be believed, and few people do. A FSM bumper sticker doesn't mean that the owner of the car believes in a floating linguini entity. Scientology, on the other hand, is almost as ridiculous, and is serious.

 * I think you're taking its use a little too seriously. It is a bit of humourous hyperbole, using the satire, not an actual targeting of the satire itself. It is in a similar vein to the use of Asimov on the throne with the comment "Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do" which is not meant as an actual indictment of Asimov. ~ Kalki 05:05, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

 * I dunno, to me it looks like the picture is meant as an example of the quote accompanying it.--24.83.231.43 00:04, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

I request to have the Flying Spaghetti Monster taken down in reference to this quote. How about a picture of a black cat or something, the quote can be about more than just religion. --Yoda99bc (talk) 17:55, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

I agree that using the FSM as an example for this quote is inappropriate. I came to the discussion page to mention that only to discover that it had first been reported six years earlier. I deleted that picture and its caption. Raran75 (talk) 13:13, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

Pi Quote
"How I want a drink, alcoholic of course, after the heavy lectures involving quantum mechanics! " Not by Asimov, made famous by Martin Gardener who attributes it to Sir James Jeans http://mathworld.wolfram.com/PiWordplay.html Pete 13:56, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

posthumous quotes?
I'm confused... some of the quotes listed are assigned dates after Asimov's death. I understand that something can be quoted years after it is said, but why is the secondary date preferred over the date of the original? (...and how reliable are these attributions?) Thanks, 168.9.120.8 15:47, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Last Words
"I don't believe in a Heaven or a Hell." -Isaac Asimov

Unsourced

 * These require citations to adequate sources before being placed into the main article.

 * The true delight is in the finding out rather than in the knowing.
 * There is a single light of science, and to brighten it anywhere is to brighten it everywhere.
 * To introduce something altogether new would mean to begin all over, to become ignorant again, and to run the old, old risk of failing to learn.
 * True literacy is becoming an arcane art and the United States is steadily dumbing down.
 * the above 4 were all directly above a correctly sourced quote, with a citation, but do not seem to be from that particular source — even if they were, such is not a proper citation and causes confusions.

Note: some of the references are in the portuguese wikiquote. I've put the references here in this Talk Page. Mdob (talk) 11:27, 25 October 2015 (UTC)

Beliefs and Religion

 * I prefer rationalism to atheism. The question of God and other objects-of-faith are outside reason and play no part in rationalism, thus you don't have to waste your time in either attacking or defending.

 * If I am right, then (religious fundamentalists) will not go to Heaven, because there is no Heaven. If they are right, then they will not go to Heaven, because they are hypocrites.

 * It seems to me that God is a convenient invention of the human mind.

 * Creationists don't want equal time, ... they want all the time there is.

 * Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived.

Found it in "Notes for a Memoir: On Isaac Asimov, Life, and Writing" at google books

quoted in "Holy Moses: Holy Writ Revisited" - Página 177, Joseph E. Guretzki - D. W. Friesen Sons, Limited, 2004, ISBN 1553830083, 9781553830085 - 402 páginas

 * One would suppose that the battle for religious liberty was won in the United States two hundred years ago. However, in the time since, and right now, powerful voices are always raised in favor of bigotry and thought control.

 * If I were not an atheist, I would believe in a God who would choose to save people on the basis of the totality of their lives and not the pattern of their words. I think he would prefer an honest and righteous atheist to a TV preacher whose every word is God, God, God, and whose every deed is foul, foul, foul.

Death
- Fantastic voyage II: destination brain: Volume 2 - página 275, Isaac Asimov - Grafton, 1988, ISBN 0586200258, 9780586200254 - 480 páginas
 * In life, unlike chess, the game continues after checkmate.

 * Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition that's troublesome.

-quoted in "Digital video transition analysis and detection" - Página 33, Wei Jyh Heng, King N. Ngan - World Scientific, 2002, ISBN 9812381856, 9789812381859 - 190 páginas

 * Although the time of death is approaching me, I am not afraid of dying and going to Hell or (what would be considerably worse) going to the popularized version of Heaven. I expect death to be nothingness and, for removing me from all possible fears of death, I am thankful to atheism.

 * There is nothing frightening about an eternal dreamless sleep. Surely it is better than eternal torment in Hell and eternal boredom in Heaven.

 * Life is a journey, but don't worry, you'll find a parking spot at the end.

- quoted in "Notes for a memoir: on Isaac Asimov, life, and writing" - página 35, Janet Asimov - Prometheus Books, 2006, ISBN 1591024056, 9781591024057 - 207 páginas

 * “The day you stop learning is the day you begin decaying.” Isaac Asimov

Knowledge and science

 * A subtle thought that is in error may yet give rise to fruitful inquiry that can establish truths of great value.

 * I believe that only scientists can understand the universe. It is not so much that I have confidence in scientists being right, but that I have so much in nonscientists being wrong.

Quasar, quasar, burning bright - página 235, Isaac Asimov - Doubleday, 1978, ISBN 0385134649, 9780385134644 - 240 páginas

Asimov's guide to science - página 15, Isaac Asimov - Basic Books, 1972 - 945 páginas
 * If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them.

Past, present, and future - página 65, Isaac Asimov - Prometheus Books, 1987, ISBN 0879753935, 9780879753931 - 374 páginas
 * Inspect every piece of pseudoscience and you will find a security blanket, a thumb to suck, a skirt to hold. What does the scientist have to offer in exchange? Uncertainty! Insecurity!

 * Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is.

 * Suppose that we are wise enough to learn and know — and yet not wise enough to control our learning and knowledge, so that we use it to destroy ourselves? Even if that is so, knowledge remains better than ignorance.

 * The facts, gentlemen, and nothing but the facts, for careful eyes are narrowly watching.

 * The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!', but 'That's funny ...'
 * quoted in Proceedings of the ... session: Volume 36 - página 22, South Pacific Applied Geoscience Commission - SOPAC Technical Secetariat, 1994

 * Garson "The Quote Investigator" O'Toole researched possible sources for this quote and reported on them here. --Hughh (talk) 17:35, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

This is from Isaac Asimov and Jason A. Shulman's "Isaac Asimov's Book of Science and Nature Quotations" (New York: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1988), p. 281. --Themis-Athena (talk) 10:02, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
 * The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.

 * The true delight is in the finding out rather than in the knowing.

 * There is a single light of science, and to brighten it anywhere is to brighten it everywhere.

 * To introduce something altogether new would mean to begin all over, to become ignorant again, and to run the old, old risk of failing to learn.

 * True literacy is becoming an arcane art and the United States is steadily dumbing down.

 * When I read about the way in which library funds are being cut and cut, I can only think that American society has found one more way to destroy itself.

The road to infinity - página 170, Isaac Asimov - Doubleday, 1979, ISBN 038514962X, 9780385149624 - 217 páginas
 * Where any answer is possible, all answers are meaningless.

 * The Law of conservation of energy tells us we can't get something for nothing, but we refuse to believe it. — Book of Science and Nature Quotations, 1988.

 * We are forever teetering on the brink of the unknowable, and trying to understand what cannot be understood. It is what makes us men.

 * This is a quote in an introduction to a short story in an anthology which I can no longer find:

"Are there things in the Universe that we cannot know in the usual way of observing and measuring, but that we can know in some other way -- intuition, revelation, mad insight?

"If so, how can you know that what you know in these non-knowing ways is really so. Anything you know without knowing, others can know only through your flat statement without any proof other than 'I know!'

"All this leads to such madness that I, for one, am content with the knowable. That is enough to know." ~ Isaac Asimov 104.57.157.12 17:07, 2 January 2017 (UTC) Terry Bond, 1/2/17

"Science can amuse and fascinate us all, but it is engineering that changes the world" Claimed here

Writing

 * From my close observation of writers ... they fall into two groups: 1) those who bleed copiously and visibly at any bad review, and 2) those who bleed copiously and secretly at any bad review.

 * I write for the same reason I breathe — because if I didn't, I would die.

 * Until I became a published writer, I remained completely ignorant of books on how to write and courses on the subject ... they would have spoiled my natural style; made me observe caution; would have hedged me with rules.

 * Well, I can type all day without getting tired.
 * Response to a question as to which he preferred, women or writing.

 * Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers.

 * I type and think at 90 words a minute.

 * In an article titled "The Unforgivable Sin", Isaac Asimov stated, "...don’t use a long word when a short word will do as well; don’t use a foreign word when an English word will do as well; don’t use a little-known word when a common word will do as well."

I am new to Wikiquote, so I'm not sure how to address this but I can source that quote. The title of the essay ("The Unforgivable Sin") is correct, it appears in the February 15th, 1982 edition of Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine. It's listed here: http://www.asimovonline.com/oldsite/Essays/writing.html I have a copy of the magazine & verified the quote.

 * A poor idea well written is more likely to be accepted than a good idea poorly written.

 * Any book worth banning is a book worth reading.

Himself

 * Early in my school career, I turned out to be an incorrigible disciplinary problem. I could understand what the teacher was saying as fast as she could say it, I found time hanging heavy, so I would occasionally talk to my neighbor. That was my great crime, I talked.

 * I am not a speed reader. I am a speed understander.

 * If I could trace my origins to Judas Maccabaeus or King David, that would not add one inch to my stature. It may well be that many East European Jews are descended from Khazars, I may be one of them. Who knows? And who cares?

 * In 1936, I first wrote science fiction. It was a long-winded attempt at writing an endless novel ... which died. I remember one sentence: 'Whole forests stood sere and brown in midsummer.' That was the first Asimovian science-fiction sentence.

 * Nothing interferes with my concentration. You could put on an orgy in my office and I wouldn't look up. Well, maybe once.

Computers

 * All sorts of computer errors are now turning up. You'd be surprised to know the number of doctors who claim they are treating pregnant men.
 * quoted in "Wit" - Página 236, Des MacHale - Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2003, ISBN 0740733303, 9780740733307 - 320 páginas

 * I do not fear computers. I fear lack of them.
 * quoted in "Computers for business, a book of readings" - página 305, Hugh J. Watson, Archie B. Carroll - Business Publications ; Georgetown, Ont. : Irwin-Dorsey, 1980, ISBN 0256022895, 9780256022896 - 342 páginas

 * Part of the inhumanity of the computer is that, once it is competently programmed and working smoothly, it is completely honest.
 * From Change!: Seventy-one Glimpses of the Future (1981, no preview nor ebook available), quoted in Karla Sasser's Friggin' Bean Counters (2015), quote on p. 128, with citation on p. 197. --Hughh (talk) 17:34, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

Other

 * And above all things, never think that you're not good enough yourself. A man should never think that. My belief is that in life people will take you at your own reckoning.

 * How I want a drink, alcoholic of course, after the heavy lectures involving quantum mechanics! (This is a mnemonic phrase: the number of letters in each word of the phrase is a decimal digit of pi)

 * It takes more than capital to swing business. You've got to have the A. I. D. degree to get by — Advertising, Initiative, and Dynamics.

 * John Dalton's records, carefully preserved for a century, were destroyed during the World War II bombing of Manchester. It is not only the living who are killed in war.

 * United Nations, New York, December 25. The peace and joy of the Christmas season was marred by a proclamation of a general strike of all the military forces of the world. Panic reigns in the hearts of all the patriots of every persuasion. Meanwhile, fears of universal disaster sank to an all-time low over the world.

 * Night was a wonderful time in Brooklyn in the 1930s. Air conditioning was unknown except in movie houses, and so was television. There was nothing to keep one in the house. Furthermore, few people owned automobiles, so there was nothing to carry one away. That left the streets and the stoops. The very fullness served as an inhibition to crime.

 * No one can possibly have lived through the Great Depression without being scarred by it. No amount of experience since the depression can convince someone who has lived through it that the world is safe economically.

 * To insult someone we call him 'bestial'. For deliberate cruelty and nature, 'human' might be the greater insult.

 * Start part three!
 * After having seen The Empire Strikes Back

 * Intelligence is an extremely subtle concept. It's a kind of understanding that flourishes if it's combined with a good memory, but exists anyway even in the absence of good memory. It's the ability to draw consequences from causes, to make correct inferences, to foresee what might be the result, to work out logical problems, to be reasonable, rational, to have the ability to understand the solution from perhaps insufficient information. You know when a person is intelligent, but you can be easily fooled if you are not yourself intelligent.

Help with source verification
I'm fairly sure that the quote "If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them" came from (or was at least found in) Asimov's Guide to Science (1972), an updated edition of The Intelligent Man's Guide to Science. I am unable to verify that it is in there however since while Google Books says it is there on page 15 or so, it won't let me see enough of the page to verify. Also I found a source from NASA that says the quote is from Asimov, I'm not sure if that counts as enough of a source if someone isn't able to verify that it is from Asimov's Guide to Science. That source can be found here. Bastian964 (talk) 02:12, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

Mark Ryan Berg
Complexity is not a measure of the system being observed but a measure of the observers ability to comprehend the system. By Mark Ryan Berg

Disputed
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!', but 'That's funny ...'

This is attributed to "Proceedings of the ... session: Volume 36 - página 22, South Pacific Applied Geoscience Commission - SOPAC Technical Secetariat, 1994." This is dubious, for several reasons.

Unsigned comment by 216.80.140.209, 10 May 2016.
 * Volume 36 of the proceedings of the SOPAC (http://ict.sopac.org/VirLib/PS0036.pdf) is from 2007, not 1994.
 * This quote comes up twice in that volume, on pages 22 and 85. However, both are statements made by somebody other than Asimov, attributing the quote without reference to Asimov.
 * Even if it occurred in 1994, Asimov died in April 1992.

 * See https://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/03/02/eureka-funny/. Richard75 (talk) 15:32, 4 September 2020 (UTC)

 * "Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do." is frequently attributed to Asimov but see https://quoteinvestigator.com/2019/07/13/know-all/: "Currently, there is no substantive evidence supporting the attribution to Isaac Asimov."Mcljlm (talk) 01:17, 8 December 2022 (UTC)

The Last Question
I know that this is one of Asimov's best stories, and one of his favourites. But that doesn't seem like a good enough reason to quote so much of it here. Remember that this material is copyright, and it's hard to see how copying so much of it can be fair use, or why it belongs in a list of quotes. And as another user has pointed out before, it's a massive spoiler for anyone who hasn't read it yet. It should be removed. Richard75 (talk) 17:33, 9 September 2017 (UTC)
 * I know it's his favourite story, and one of his most famous and popular stories, but that's not the point. Richard75 (talk) 13:57, 9 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Again, it's a good story but we can't publish it here. This isn't a quote, it's a huge copyright violation and it's not allowed. Richard75 (talk) 21:43, 23 June 2018 (UTC)
 * I have again RESTORED quotes which are quite PROPER and APPROPRIATE inclusions. Your apparent obsession with repeatedly deleting these 3 particular quotes from one of Asimov’s favorite stories, spuriously as "just copyright infringement and we can't have it", and couple others from a couple of his early works as "insignificant" is somewhat fanatical if not simply asinine vandalism and trolling. ~ ♞☤☮♌Kalki·†·⚓⊙☳☶⚡ 00:52, 24 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Don't be rude, and don't assume bad faith; your attitude is completely the opposite of how Wiki editors are expected to behave. You have also completely failed to address the point I raised, which is that the lengthy quote from The Last Question can't be justified and infringes copyright. It is too long to qualify as a fair quote, and it compromises the commercial value of the story to the copyright holder. If you disagree, then I suggest you do so by reference to Wikiquote's copyright policy or guidance (e.g. this), rather than just resorting to abuse. Richard75 (talk) 19:54, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

 * Richard75 (talk) - Two points ---

 * 1. As you can read at Spoiler, since Wikipedia is meant as an encyclopedia site and not a fan site, "Wikipedia articles may include spoilers and no spoiler warnings." I see no reason why the same would not apply here at Wikiquote.

 * 2. "Fair use" can be stretchy and takes several things into account, the length of the quoted material being one. The amount of material used depends on the length of the original work. In a short, one paragraph piece, lifting three sentences can be very impactful while three sentences from a 2,200 word essay is a drop in the bucket. More fair use information for you: Fair Use/Fair Dealing Handbook = https://infojustice.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/band-and-gerafi-2013.pdf

 * Thank you for your time, Wordreader (talk) 00:41, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

 * Something else I just saw that may be of help to us chickens: Limits on quotations. Thanks again. Wordreader (talk) 00:54, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

Quotes from his stories
Should we have a separate section for quotes taken from his stories (which might not necessarily reflect his opinions), instead of including them with things he said himself? Richard75 (talk) 19:40, 26 March 2019 (UTC)

Proposal to delete a quote
In the section for Robot Dreams there is the following quote by one of Asimov's fictional characters, Susan Calvin:

"There are limits beyond which your folly will not carry you. I am glad of that. In fact, I am relieved."

Personally I don't think this really adds anything to this article and should be deleted, but I know that one editor disagrees, so I'd like to see if there is a general consensus on the matter. Richard75 (talk) 17:15, 26 August 2020 (UTC)

 * There already is a consensus of sorts. The person who originally posted it thought it was interesting. So did I, because I liked the way Asimov put it. As I typed in the explanation the first time I reverted your deletion, I found it interesting enough to look up the story (I'd stopped reading Asimov years ago, before this story, so I hadn't read it). In addition, you missed the fact that someone (perhaps the original poster) went to the extra trouble of using it as a caption for an illustration.

 * There are quite a few quotes on the page that I think are not noteworthy but have let stand. That may be a reflection of my changing tastes. But there's one in particular which I think contributes absolutely nothing and is worthy of being deleted: "If anyone can be considered the greatest writer who ever lived, it is Shakespeare." This is clearly not a unique opinion: millions say the same thing. And the way it's phrased is not noteworthy. Zgystardst (talk) 17:22, 28 August 2020 (UTC)

 * Fair enough. Richard75 (talk) 15:24, 4 September 2020 (UTC)

Common quote attributed to Asimov, but don't see a source.
''"When stupidity is considered patriotism, it is unsafe to be intelligent". ''

I keep seeing this phrase crop up in internet comment sections, quote aggerate sites, and even in articles, all attributed to Isaac Asimov. I have looked around, but cannot find a stated source for it. It is very apropos to today's politics, but if there is no source, that's moot. Does anyone know if this phrase is an actual quote?

thank you. Wordreader (talk) 08:43, 19 June 2022 (UTC)

 * Agreed! Most likely fake. Tomruen (talk) 00:48, 16 September 2022 (UTC)

 * I know, stale discussion, but I thought I'd contribute anyway. I don't know the immediate source of this, but it looks like it's related to the well-known lines ending "Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College" by Thomas Gray: "where ignorance is bliss, /  'Tis folly to be wise." Zgystardst (talk) 21:08, 3 May 2024 (UTC)
 * In a Reddit discussion, it is claimed that this is the source:
 * "It's from 'Asimov's guide to Shakespeare' Vol II Chapter 36- 'Henry VI, Part One': https://archive.org/details/asimovsguidetosh0000asim/page/528 From a section discussing Act I, Scene i, lines 131-134: To those English who were taught to believe that one Englishman was as good as ten Frenchmen, Fastolfe's advice to avoid the fight was looked on as cowardice and he was blamed for Talbot's defeat. This is an example of what those who have studied history well know: When stupidity is considered patriotism, it is unsafe to be intelligent."
 * I haven't checked the source. RichardMathews (talk) 17:07, 23 May 2024 (UTC)
 * @RichardMathews -  Greetings. The sentence is there alright, but on the facing page, #529. It does not say if he, in turn, is quoting somebody else. When do WQ editors decide to enter a quote here? Is there a minimum number of sources?
 * Thank you for your time, Wordreader (talk) 18:57, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Talk:Isaac Asimov


text:
Jan van Eyck

Jan van Eyck (c. 1385 – 9 July 1441) was a Flemish painter, one of the first artists to explore oil paint and one of the first to use the 3/4 pose.

Sourced:

 * AlC IXH XAN (Als Ich Kan)
 * I do as I can
 * The inscription on the frame of Man in the Red Turban.

title: Jan van Eyck


text:
Penn Jillette

Penn Fraser Jillette (born 5 March 1955) is an American magician, scientific skeptic, actor, musician, inventor, television presenter, and author, best known for his work with fellow magician Teller as half of the team Penn & Teller. The duo has been featured in numerous stage and television shows, such as Penn & Teller: Fool Us and Penn & Teller: Bullshit!, and is currently headlining in Las Vegas at The Rio. Jillette serves as the act's orator and raconteur. He also hosted Penn Radio with juggler Michael Goudeau.

1990s

 * Technology adds nothing to art. Two thousand years ago, I could tell you a story, and at any point during the story I could stop, and ask, Now do you want the hero to be kidnapped, or not? But that would, of course, have ruined the story. Part of the experience of being entertained is sitting back and plugging into someone else's vision.
 * Wired Issue 2.09 (September 1994)

 * That's the beauty of the Web: You can roll around in a stranger's obsession without having to smell his or her house. You can amscray whenever you want without being rude.  The site gets its "hit" and you know more about our species' diversity.
 * "Free Celebrity Nudes!" in Penn's Columns (15 October 1997) at Penn & Teller.com

 * Every time something really bad happens, people cry out for safety, and the government answers by taking rights away from good people.
 * Penn and Teller's How to Play in Traffic (1997), p. 35

 * Penn turned to me […] "Do I have to call him [Prince Charles] 'Your Majesty' or any of that shit? […] And what about bowing? I have to bow? We don't bow in America. […] I won't get put in the Tower of London or anything?" […] I reassured him on these points. No Highnessing, no kowtowing. At last the Prince reaches Penn, who immediately falls almost prostrate to the floor. "Your Majesty Highness, Your Royal Sir…" and so on and so forth, babbling like a gibbon on speed. The Prince passes on to me and whoever was the other side of me without turning a hair. Seen it all before. After he had gone, I watched Penn, an enormous man, crouching on the floor, rolling about, beating the planks of the stage, sobbing, stuffing his fist in his mouth and moaning up to the fly-tower: "Why did I do that? What came over me? What power do they have? I betrayed my country!"
 * In a receiving line after a performance for the birthday of Prince Charles in 1998.
 * Stephen Fry, More Fool Me (2015), Overlook Press, Peter Mayer Publishers Inc., New York, New York.

2000s

 * We can't start getting picky because we've got enough food; that's just self-centered and racist. Unless you and yours are starving, you need to shut the fuck up!
 * "Eat This!", Penn & Teller: Bullshit! (4 April 2003)

 * I've always wanted to make the world a more rational place. I'm still working on it.
 * "10 Questions: Penn Jillette", IGN (18 June 2003)

 * A guy called up, and in his lead, he said, "We've talked before. I used to be with US but now I'm for SELF." And I was like, "I guess we know everything now, don't we?" … I kind of laughed and I went, "I guess a lot of people are like that." And he paused and went, "Uhhh… what?" And I said, "Oh, nothing."
 * "An Interview with Penn Jillette : The non-silent half of Penn & Teller discusses his career" IGN (13 October 2003)

 * It's fair to say that the Bible contains equal amounts of fact, history, and pizza. … God works in mysterious, inefficient, and breathtakingly cruel ways.
 * This statement is a rebuke to the famous assertion by William Cowper: "God moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform He plants his footsteps in the sea, And rides upon the storm."

 * Take some time and put the Bible on your summer reading list. Try and stick with it cover to cover. Not because it teaches history; we've shown you it doesn't. Read it because you'll see for yourself what the Bible is all about. It sure isn't great literature. If it were published as fiction, no reviewer would give it a passing grade. There are some vivid scenes and some quotable phrases, but there's no plot, no structure, there's a tremendous amount of filler, and the characters are painfully one-dimensional. Whatever you do, don't read the Bible for a moral code: it advocates prejudice, cruelty, superstition, and murder. Read it because: we need more atheists — and nothin will get you there faster than readin' the damn Bible.'
 * "The Bible: Fact or Fiction?" Penn & Teller: Bullshit!, season 2 episode 6 (6 May 2004)

 * Freedom means the right to be stupid.
 * Free FM Radio Show (15 September 2006)

 * If you can just convince the dope people that the gun people are right and the gun people that the dope people are right, we could actually live in a lot more freedom.
 * Glenn Beck program on CNN (2 November 2006)

It's because you get older, your responsibilities are different. Now I'm taking care of children instead of being a child. It makes the world look scarier. That happens to everyone.'''
 * '''Two things have always been true about human beings. One, the world is always getting better. Two, the people living at that time think it`s getting worse.
 * "Honest Questions with Penn Jillette" (2 November 2007), CNN

 * My favorite thing about the Internet is that you get to go into the private world of real creeps without having to smell them.
 * As quoted in "Thoughts On the Business of Life" in Forbes magazine (12 November 2007)

 * Every nut who kills people has a Bible lying around. If you're looking for violent rape imagery, the Bible's right there in your hotel room. If you just want to look up ways to screw people up, there it is, and you're justified because God told you to.
 * "Bull Sessions with Penn Jillette" Reason (15 January 2008)

 * And I've always said, you know, that I don't respect people that don't proselytize. I don't respect that at all. If you believe that there's a heaven and hell, and people could be going to hell — or not getting eternal life, or whatever — and you think that, "Well, it's not really worth tellin' 'em this, because it would make it socially awkward", and atheists who think that people shouldn't proselytize, "Just leave me alone. Keep your religion to yourself"... How much do you have to hate somebody to not proselytize? How much do you have to hate somebody to believe that everlasting life is possible and not tell them that? I mean, if I believe, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that a truck was coming at you and you didn't believe it —that truck was bearing down on you — there's a certain point where I tackle you, and this is more important than that.
 * "A Gift of a Bible", Penn Says episode 192, Crackle, 2:59

There Is No God (2005)

 * "There Is No God" (text and audio) on This I Believe NPR (21 November 2005)

 * I believe that there is no God. I'm beyond atheism. Atheism is not believing in God. Not believing in God is easy — you can't prove a negative, so there's no work to do

 * I'm saying, "This I believe: I believe there is no God." Having taken that step, it informs every moment of my life. I'm not greedy. I have love, blue skies, rainbows and Hallmark cards, and that has to be enough. It has to be enough, but it's everything in the world and everything in the world is plenty for me. It seems just rude to beg the invisible for more. Just the love of my family that raised me and the family I'm raising now is enough that I don't need heaven. I won the huge genetic lottery and I get joy every day.

 * Believing there's no God means I can't really be forgiven except by kindness and faulty memories. That's good; it makes me want to be more thoughtful. I have to try to treat people right the first time around.

 * I can read ideas from all different people from all different cultures. Without God, we can agree on reality, and I can keep learning where I'm wrong. We can all keep adjusting, so we can really communicate. I don't travel in circles where people say, "I have faith, I believe this in my heart and nothing you can say or do can shake my faith." That's just a long-winded religious way to say, "shut up," or another two words that the FCC likes less.

2010s
Penn: We haven’t tackled Scientology [in Penn & Teller: Bullshit!] because Showtime doesn’t want us to. Maybe they have deals with individual Scientologists—I’m not sure. And we haven’t tackled Islam because we have families. Interviewer: Meaning, you won’t attack Islam because you’re afraid it’ll attack back … Penn: Right, and I think the worst thing you can say about a group in a free society is that you’re afraid to talk about it—I can’t think of anything more horrific.
 * Interviewer: Are there any groups you won’t go after?
 * Las Vegas Weekly Staff, "A uniquely Weekly ranking of the personalities who define Las Vegas", Las Vegas Weekly (24 June 2010) (brief interview). Accessed 19 April 2019.

 * Atheism is the only real hope against terrorism.
 * "Morality, Religion And Bullsh*T: An Interview With Penn Jillette" by Ryan Shaffer, at the American Humanist Association (December 2012)

Penn: [long pause] Everything else being equal, I think "yes". Rabbi Daniel Lapin: Then we agree. Penn: The argument is made by me that the celebration of faith, the glorification of faith, and faith being defined as The Bible kind of does as belief without proof, is not something that I feel is good to celebrate. To answer the question about evil, I always find that evil takes responsibility away. I want to have—whether it’s me or whether it's a criminal—I want to have full responsibility of my mistakes. And I think when you have this image, whether it's the Disney image of devil Pluto and angel Pluto on your shoulders, pulling you one direction or another, I think that idea of evil is an idea that is anti-responsibility.
 * Rabbi Daniel Lapin: Here's a really blunt question: would the world be a better or a worse place if a billion Muslims became evangelical Christians tomorrow?
 * The Glenn Beck Program, April 12, 2013. Edited, including omission of some non-germane remarks. YouTube

I don't know, so I'm an atheist libertarian (2011)

 * Interview: "I don't know, so I'm an atheist libertarian" at CNN (16 August 2011)

"I don't know" is not an apology. There's no shame. '''It's a simple statement of fact. When Richard Feynman didn't know, he often worked harder than anyone else to find out, but while he didn't know, he said, "I don't know."''' I like to think I fit in somewhere between my friends Harold and Richard. I don't know. I try to remember to say "I don't know" just the way they both did, as a simple statement of fact. It doesn't always work, but I try.
 * My friend Richard Feynman said, "I don't know." I heard him say it several times. He said it just like Harold, the mentally handicapped dishwasher I worked with when I was a young man making minimum wage at Famous Bill's Restaurant in Greenfield, Massachusetts.

And''' I don't think anyone really knows how to help everyone. I don't even know what's best for me.'''
 * What makes me libertarian is what makes me an atheist — I don't know. If I don't know, I don't believe. I don't know exactly how we got here, and I don't think anyone else does, either. We have some of the pieces of the puzzle and we'll get more, but I'm not going to use faith to fill in the gaps. I'm not going to believe things that TV hosts state without proof. I'll wait for real evidence and then I'll believe.

People need to be fed, medicated, educated, clothed, and sheltered, and if we're compassionate we'll help them, but you get no moral credit for forcing other people to do what you think is right. There is great joy in helping people, but no joy in doing it at gunpoint.
 * It's amazing to me how many people think that voting to have the government give poor people money is compassion. Helping poor and suffering people is compassion. Voting for our government to use guns to give money to help poor and suffering people is immoral self-righteous bullying laziness.

I don't believe the majority always knows what's best for everyone. The fact that the majority thinks they have a way to get something good does not give them the right to use force on the minority that don't want to pay for it. If you have to use a gun, I don't believe you really know jack. '''Democracy without respect for individual rights sucks. It's just ganging up against the weird kid, and I'm always the weird kid.'''
 * Government is force — literally, not figuratively.

God, No!: Signs You May Already Be an Atheist and Other Magical Tales (2011)

 * You don't have to be brave or a saint, a martyr, or even very smart to be an atheist. All you have to be able to say is "I don't know."
 * p. xiii

 * Reading the Bible is the fast track to atheism. Reading the Bible means starting at "In the beginning..." and throwing it down with disgust at "...the grace of the lord Jesus be with all. Amen." I'm sure there are lots of religious people who've read the Bible from start to finish and kept their faith, but in my self-selected sample, all the people I know who have done that are atheists.
 * p. 42

 * Atheists are also morally obligated to tell the truth as we see it. We should preach and proselytize too. We need to help believers. Someone who believes in god is wasting big parts of his or her life, holding back science and love, and giving "moral" support to dangerous extremists. If you believe something, you must share it; it's one of the ways we all learn about truth.
 * p. 62

 * If every trace of any single religion were wiped out and nothing were passed on, it would never be created exactly that way again. There might be some other nonsense in its place, but not that exact nonsense. If all of science were wiped out, it would still be true and someone would find a way to figure it all out again.
 * p. 129

Penn Jillette Rapes All the Women He Wants To (2012)

 * "Penn Jillette Rapes All the Women He Wants To" at Interrobang (30 April 2012)

 * The question I get asked by religious people all the time is, without God, what’s to stop me from raping all I want? And my answer is: I do rape all I want. And the amount I want is zero. And I do murder all I want, and the amount I want is zero. The fact that these people think that if they didn’t have this person watching over them that they would go on killing, raping rampages is the most self-damning thing I can imagine. I don't want to do that. Right now, without any god, I don't want to jump across this table and strangle you. I have no desire to strangle you. I have no desire to flip you over and rape you.

 * I love people. And I think if you take the 7 billion people on the planet and you round it off, about 7 billion of them are good. To find bad people is really difficult. Not people doing bad things, but really bad people who get up in the morning and say, How can I fuck people up? That’s a really rare thing. Misguided, you know, mistaken, but I just can’t understand how this view of humanity that all we want to do is horrible things to each other and it’s just this belief in something else that stops us. And that that is what you see over and over again through the Bible. There’s reward and punishment but there’s no – I mean, nothing feels better than helping someone out. I mean, there’s nothing better, nothing better in the world than someone whose life was fucked up and you do a little something and now their life isn’t. I mean, you can talk about the joy of sex, hedonistic joys of food, and you can talk about the joy with your children, but man, someone is going through a hard time and you help them out, man you feel good for months.

 * There are really good sociobiological reasons for why we evolved to cooperate. It really is good for all of us. You can be a hard ass and just run common sense, you know, what is the most effective way for people to interact and you do better if you treat people well, you just do. And on top of that the whole world does better if you treat people well. It works out on any level.

 * If you just want to help people out you end up being a good person. I mean there’s every single kind of horrible self-help book will tell you if you’re feeling down and you’re feeling depressed just go help someone out and it’s a cliché, you wouldn’t even say it it’s so embarrassing, except it happens to be true.

Why Penn Jillette is Terrified of a President Trump (2016)

 * Quotes of Jillette from "Why Penn Jillette is Terrified of a President Trump" by Grant Burningham, in Newsweek (1 March 2016)

 * The problem is, I know Trump, so my optimism has been squashed like a baby bird … Everything bad I had to say about him, I said to his face. … I think he’s very good, very compelling on that show [Celebrity Apprentice] … I really like him because of his absence of filters. I really like the glimpse we get into the human heart we get when someone loses their filters … If he weren’t running for president, you’d be seeing essays from me about how much I learned from Donald Trump and how much I loved being on the show … I’m feeling so, so, so guilty, because I feel like, along with millions of other people, I played right into this. The cynicism of the Clintons, the careful, tightrope walk of all politicians, forced me, as an atheist, to get down on my knees and pray that someone would come along with some kind of authenticity … Well, someone called my bluff, goddamn it. … I’m a pure and utter peacenik. I want a president who sings the praises of people, sings the praises of peace and sings the praises of working together for a great country … Abraham Lincoln wouldn’t have laughed about waterboarding … If you told me right now I could have another eight years of Obama, I would not hesitate to grab at it. … He is unquestionably good and unquestionably smarter than I am, which is putting the bar pretty low. I want a president that is kinder, smarter and more measured than me.

 * I have written and spoken and joked with friends the meanest, cruelest, most hateful things that could ever been said by me, have been said about the Clintons. I loathe them. I disagree with Hillary Clinton on just about everything there is to disagree with a person about. If it comes down to Trump and Hillary, I will put a Hillary Clinton sticker on my fucking car.

 * Someone who is paying attention can do the same thing that Trump is doing with hate, and do it with love, and become president … That’s kind of beautiful. There’s nothing more optimistic than that. … Donald Trump does, when it comes right down to it, fuck up everything … He fucks up his casinos. He fucks up his buildings.... Maybe he’ll fuck up his campaign before he fucks up the country.

Interview with David Marchese (2018)

 * "In Conversation: Penn Jillette Talking magic, truth, and Trump’s alleged Apprentice Tapes." (14 August 2018), by David Marchese, Vulture

 * For 50 million years our biggest problems were too few calories, too little information. For about 50 years our biggest problem has been too many calories, too much information. We have to adjust, and I believe we will really fast. I also believe it will be wicked ugly while we’re adjusting.

 * I have nothing good to say about Donald Trump as president.

 * Trump, who never showed the slightest glimpse of humility.

Penn Jillette Wants to Talk It All Out (2024)

 * Quotes of Jillette from "Penn Jillette Wants to Talk It All Out" by Tim Grierson, in Cracked (23 January 2024)

 * We can argue forever about gun control — whether that’s a good idea or a bad idea, including what the framers thought — but if we can’t agree that the shootings happened, then we can’t talk. I don’t think we’ve ever experienced a time in human history where there wasn’t a shared reality, even if that reality was false.
 * ... if you want to get heavy about it, you can say that every magic show is an exploration of how we determine what’s true.
 * He's certainly not doing enough to help Palestinians. He's certainly not doing enough to help people over there suffering — which is also true for you, also true for me, true for everybody.
 * ... if you use the word “we,” and you’re not talking about eight billion people, fuck you.
 * I’m not as nervous about being attacked for it as I am nervous about being wrong. As a good friend of mine said, “I don’t mind being called an asshole — I don’t want to be an asshole.”
 * Many times when I identified as Libertarian, people said to me, “It’s just rich white guys that don’t want to be told what to do,” and I had a zillion answers to that — and now that seems 100 percent accurate.
 * My ambitions were always, I think, fairly level-headed. I felt I could earn my living like my dad, who went from jail guard in a small town to supporting his family doing something he really loved — that was my goal. And when people talk to me and Teller about success, the day we were paying our bills doing a magic and juggling show, I was done.
 * What I am doing is creating ephemera, and I believe that’s not only okay, that’s part of what makes it beautiful. I mean, I am aware it’s likely that in 30 years someone who is deeply interested in magic will dig up recordings of Fool Us and have things to learn, but that’s not what we’re really talking about. That’s excavating a piece of pottery.

Misattributed

 * Luck is probability taken personally.
 * Often repeated by Penn Jillette, who attributes this quote to Chip Denman.

title: Penn Jillette