“What cannot be said above all must not be silenced but written.”

— Jacques Derrida

Last update May 7, 2019. History

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Jacques Derrida 58

French philosopher (1930-2004) 1930–2004

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“The whole sense of the book might be summed up the following words: what can be said at all can be said clearly, and what we cannot talk about we must pass over in silence.”

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Original German: Man könnte den ganzen Sinn des Buches etwa in die Worte fassen: Was sich überhaupt sagen lässt, lässt sich klar sagen; und wovon man nicht reden kann, darüber muss man schweigen.
Introduction
1920s, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922)

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Context: And the people bowed and prayed
To the neon god they made
And the sign flashed out its warning
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And the sign said "The words of the prophets
Are written on the subway walls
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And whispered in the sound of silence"

“However, some things must be said, and there are times when silence becomes an accomplice to injustice.”

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Variant: There are times when silence becomes an accomplice to injustice.
Source: Infidel

“A million words cannot express what a glance can convey, and a million glances cannot express what a moment of silence can.”

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar (1956) spiritual leader

Narada Bhakti Sutras (2001)
Context: A million words cannot express what a glance can convey, and a million glances cannot express what a moment of silence can. A moment of silence conveys so much more than any other expression. Still, love is beyond silence too. You can describe silence to some extent, but that which is beyond silence cannot be expressed. You give, you hug... but still something remains unexpressed.

“And of me you ask which choice you should make?” said the translator’s voice.
“Yes,” I said.
There was the sound of rocks grinding, followed by a brief silence, and then: “The moral choice is obvious,” said the Wreed. “It always is.”
“And?” I said. “What is the moral choice?”
More sounds of rocks, then: “Morality cannot be handed down from an external source.” … “It must come from within.”
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The Wreed wavered and vanished.
Source: Calculating God (2000), Chapter 32 (p. 309; ellipsis represents a minor elision of description)

“Silence is the speech of love,
The music of the spheres above.”

Richard Henry Stoddard (1825–1903) American poet

Speech of Love.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“A thinking man's greatest happiness is to have fathomed what can be fathomed and to revere in silence what cannot be fathomed.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German writer, artist, and politician

Maxim 1207, trans. Stopp
Variant translation: The greatest happiness for the thinking man is to have fathomed the fathomable, and to quietly revere the unfathomable.
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