Luce Irigaray Quotes

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

  Luce Irigaray

  Might, Becoming, Clinging

  Luce Irigaray (1985). “This Sex which is Not One”, p.214, Cornell University Press

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

  Luce Irigaray

  Differences, Issues, Salvation

  Luce Irigaray (1993). “An Ethics of Sexual Difference”, p.5, Cornell University Press

  75 Copy quote

• 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

  Nature, Men, Males

  Luce Irigaray (2008). “Sharing the world”, Continuum Intl Pub Group

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• Is e=mc2 a sexed equation? Perhaps it is. Let us make the hypothesis that it is insofar as it privileges the speed of light over other speeds that are vitally necessary to us. What seems to me to indicate the possible sexed nature of the equation is not directly its uses by nuclear weapons, rather it is having privileged what goes the fastest.

  Luce Irigaray

  Light, Nuclear, Use

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• 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

  Real, Self, Views

  Luce Irigaray (2015). “Building a New World”, p.75, Springer

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• Each sex has a relation to madness. Every desire has a relation to madness. But it would seem that one desire has been taken as wisdom, moderation, truth, leaving to the other sex the weight of a madness that cannot be acknowledged or accommodated.

  Luce Irigaray

  Sex, Taken, Leaving

  45 Copy quote

• ...more than other senses, the eye objectifies and masters. it sets at a distance, maintains the distance. in our culture, the predominance of the look over smell, taste, touch, hearing, has brought about an improverishment of bodily relations...the moment domin ates the look dominates, the body loses its materiality” -luce irigaray

  Luce Irigaray

  Distance, Eye, Smell

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• Every desire has a relation to madness.

  Luce Irigaray

  Desire, Madness, Relation

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

  Luce Irigaray

  Breathing, Taking Charge

  Luce Irigaray, Stephen Pluhácek (2003). “Between East and West: From Singularity to Community”, p.66, Columbia University Press

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• 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

  Respect, Acceptance, Important

  Luce Irigaray (2008). “Sharing the world”, Continuum Intl Pub Group

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• Traditional morality ... does not teach us how to let the other follow his or her own path, meet with whomever he or she desires, go where he or she wants.

  Luce Irigaray

  Respect, Tolerance, Desire

  Luce Irigaray (2008). “Sharing the world”, Continuum Intl Pub Group

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• 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

  Clouds, Air, Self

  Luce Irigaray (2000). “To be two”, Athlone Press

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• Between gods and men, territories are set up. At least in the no-man’s land of the heights of heaven, the depths of hell, and inside the boundary traced by the oceans. Dimensions installed by a cosmogonic trilogy that leaves each term in its generic place. There remains the earth ancestress, a fourth term, that was once the most fertile, that has been progressively buried and forgotten beneath the architectonic of patriarchal sovereignty. And this murder erupts in the form of ambivalences that have constantly to be solved and hierarchized, in twinned pairs of more or less good doubles.

  Luce Irigaray

  Ocean, Men, Land

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• 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

  Plato, Philosophy, Real

  Luce Irigaray (2002). “Between East and West: From Singularity to Community”, p.27, Columbia University Press

  28 Copy quote

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