Luce Irigaray Quotes

9 Sourced Quotes

Death is the real inspiring genius or Musagetes of philosophy, and for this reason Socrates defined philosophy as thanatou mélétè (preparation for death; Plato, Phaedo, 81a). Indeed, without death there would hardly have been any philosophizing.

Luce Irigaray
Breathing, according to me, corresponds to taking charge of one's own life.

Luce Irigaray
Self-affection is the real dwelling to which we must always return with a view to a faithfulness to ourselves and an ability to welcome the other as different.

Luce Irigaray
Be what you are becoming without clinging to what you might have been; what you might yet be.

Luce Irigaray
Your silence exists as does my self gathering. But so does the almost absolute silence of the world's dawning. In such suspension, before every utterance on earth, there is a cloud, an almost immobile air. The plants already breathe, while we still ask ourselves how to speak to each other, without taking breath away from them.

Luce Irigaray
In the movement of the proteron te phusei may be found the heart of thought, that which remains veiled in what thought says and which speaking obeys as some secret command. But already, when it speaks, thought no longer speaks what moves it. It no longer retains that emotion even as a fault of speech, as a dark night out of which it would expect to burst forth. Thought excludes the heart that moves it. That which makes thought live is spoiled, set outside of it. But it does not know this.

Luce Irigaray
Sexual difference is probably the issue in our time which could be our 'salvation' if we thought it through.

Luce Irigaray
Letting be is as important as mastering. Our tradition has encouraged us to be effective, to make or fabricate but not to let be born or let be.

Luce Irigaray
Nature is a universal that is shareable by all, males and females, men and women, and can thus be of use in mediating between all. The same does not apply for already constructed worlds and cultures. They are neither universal nor easily shareable.

Luce Irigaray