Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Teach
Precisely
History
Chemistry
Anything
Justify
Everything
Intellect
Furnishes
Nothing
Product
Examples
Products
Evolved
Example
Contains
Dangerous
Teaches

More quotes by Paul Valery

Image
Oh, hasten not this loving act, Rapture where self and not-self meet: My life has been the awaiting you, Your footfall was my own heart's beat.
Paul Valery
Image
The only treaties that ought to count are those which would effect a settlement between ulterior motives.
Paul Valery
Image
War: a massacre of people who don't know each other for the profit of people who know each other but don't massacre each other.
Paul Valery
Image
The world acquires value only through its extremes and endures only through moderation extremists make the world great, the moderates give it stability.
Paul Valery
Image
That which has been believed by everyone, always and everywhere, has every chance of being false.
Paul Valery
Image
A poet's work consists less in seeking words for his ideas than in seeking ideas for his words and predominant rhythms.
Paul Valery
Image
To see is to forget the name of the thing one sees.
Paul Valery
Image
The most ridiculous were those who, on their own authority, made themselves the judges and justices of the tribe. They seemed never to suspect that our judgments judge us, and that nothing exposes our weaknesses and reveals ourselves more naively than the attitude of pronouncing upon our neighbors.
Paul Valery
Image
Man is only man at the surface. Remove the skin, dissect, and immediately you come to machinery.
Paul Valery
Image
There are two ways to aquire the niceties of life: 1) To produce them or 2) To plunder them. When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time, a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.
Paul Valery
Image
[Beauty is] that which makes us despair.
Paul Valery
Image
The advantage of the incomprehensible is that it never loses its freshness.
Paul Valery
Image
The universe is built on a plan the profound symmetry of which is somehow present in the inner structure of our intellect.
Paul Valery
Image
A great man is one who leaves others at a loss after he is gone.
Paul Valery
Image
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.
Paul Valery
Image
Nothing is more natural than mutual misunderstanding the contrary is always surprising. I believe that one never agrees on anything except by mistake, and that all harmony among human beings is the happy fruit of an error.
Paul Valery
Image
A businessman is a hybrid of a dancer and a calculator.
Paul Valery
Image
Breath, dreams, silence, invincible calm, you triumph.
Paul Valery
Image
Our judgments judge us, and nothing reveals us, exposes our weaknesses, more ingeniously than the attitude of pronouncing upon our fellows.
Paul Valery
Image
Collect all the facts that can be collected about the life of Racine and you will never learn from them the art of his verse. All criticism is dominated by the outworn theory that the man is the cause of the work as in the eyes of the law the criminal is the cause of the crime. Far rather are they both the effects.
Paul Valery