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

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Photography invites one to give up any attempt to delineate such things as can delineate themselves.
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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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Our judgments judge us, and nothing reveals us, exposes our weaknesses, more ingeniously than the attitude of pronouncing upon our fellows.
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The world acquires value only through its extremes and endures only through moderation extremists make the world great, the moderates give it stability.
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God created man and, finding him not sufficiently alone, gave him a companion to make him feel his solitude more keenly.
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History is the science of things which are not repeated.
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Poems are never finished - just abandoned
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Politics is the art of preventing people from busying themselves with what is their own business.
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An artist never really finishes his work, he merely abandons it.
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Freedom of mind and mind itself have been most fully developed in regions where trade developed at the same time. In all ages, without exception, every intense production of art, ideas, and spiritual values has occurred in some locality where a remarkable degree of economic activity was also manifest.
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Books have the same enemies as people: fire, humidity, animals, weather, and their own content.
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The purpose of psychology is to give us a completely different idea of the things we know best.
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Advertising has annihilated the power of the most powerful adjectives.
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It is a law of nature that we defend ourselves from one affection only by means of another.
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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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Long years must pass before the truths we have made for ourselves become our very flesh.
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The advantage of the incomprehensible is that it never loses its freshness.
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Liberty is the hardest test that one can inflict on a people. To know how to be free is not given equally to all men and all nations.
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The best way to make your dreams come true is to wake up.
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