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History is the most dangerous product evolved from the chemistry of the intellect. ...History will justify anything. It teaches precisely nothing, for it contains everything and furnishes examples of everything.

Paul Valery

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Paul Valery
Age: 73 †
Born: 1871
Born: October 30
Died: 1945
Died: July 20
Essayist
Journalist
Literary Critic
Philosopher
Poet
Professor
Writer
Cette
Paul Ambroise Valéry
Paul Ambroise Valery
Paul-Ambroise Valéry
Paul Valery
Paul-Ambroise Valery
Anything
Justify
Everything
Intellect
Furnishes
Nothing
Product
Examples
Products
Evolved
Example
Contains
Dangerous
Teaches
Teach
Precisely
History
Chemistry

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At times I think and at times I am.
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If what has happened in the one person were communicated directly to the other, all art would collapse, all the effects of art would disappear.
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What is simple is false and what is not is useless.
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The advantage of the incomprehensible is that it never loses its freshness.
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A businessman is a hybrid of a dancer and a calculator.
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My hand feels touched as well as it touches reality says this, and nothing more.
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A poet's work consists less in seeking words for his ideas than in seeking ideas for his words and predominant rhythms.
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The only truths which are universal are those gross enough to be thought so.
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The only treaties that ought to count are those which would effect a settlement between ulterior motives.
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What is simple is wrong, and what is complicated cannot be understood.
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The commerce of minds was necessarily the first commerce in the world, ... since before bartering things one must barter signs, and it is necessary therefore that signs be instituted.There is no market or exchange without language. The first instrument of all commerce is language.
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That which has been believed by everyone, always and everywhere, has every chance of being false.
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Science is a collection of successful recipes.
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The mere notion of photography, when we introduce it into our meditation on the genesis of historical knowledge and its true value, suggests the simple question: Could such and such a fact, as it is narrated here, have been photographed?
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In the physical world, one cannot increase the size or quantity of anything without changing its quality. Similar figures exist only in pure geometry.
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The power of verse stems from an indefinable harmony between when it says and what it is.
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Long years must pass before the truths we have made for ourselves become our very flesh.
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We are wont to condemn self-love but what we really mean to condemn is contrary to self-love. It is that mixture of selfishness and self-hate that permanently pursues us, that prevents us from loving others, and that prohibits us from losing ourselves.
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That which has always been accepted by everyone, everywhere, is almost certain to be false.
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Having precise ideas often leads to a man doing nothing.
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