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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?
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
Simple
Notion
Fact
Mere
Narrated
Facts
Photography
Photographed
True
Meditation
Genesis
Value
Introduce
Question
Suggests
Knowledge
Introducing
Values
Historical
More quotes by Paul Valery
The wind is rising ... we must attempt to live.
Paul Valery
What is simple is wrong, and what is complicated cannot be understood.
Paul Valery
Everything changes but the avant-garde.
Paul Valery
Poems are never finished - just abandoned
Paul Valery
History is the science of things which are not repeated.
Paul Valery
It is a law of nature that we defend ourselves from one affection only by means of another.
Paul Valery
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
Books have the same enemies as people: fire, humidity, animals, weather, and their own content.
Paul Valery
In the physical world, one cannot increase the size or quantity of anything without changing its quality. Similar figures exist only in pure geometry.
Paul Valery
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
Science is feasible when the variables are few and can be enumerated when their combinations are distinct and clear. We are tending toward the condition of science and aspiring to do it. The artist works out his own formulas the interest of science lies in the art of making science.
Paul Valery
To see is to forget the name of the thing one sees.
Paul Valery
Two dangers constantly threaten the world: order and disorder.
Paul Valery
No work of art is ever completed, it is only abandoned.
Paul Valery
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
A really free mind is scarcely attached to its opinions. If the mind cannot help giving birth to ... emotions and affections which at first appear to be inseparable from them, it reacts against these intimate phenomena it experiences against its will.
Paul Valery
God created man and, finding him not sufficiently alone, gave him a companion to make him feel his solitude more keenly.
Paul Valery
If disorder is the rule with you, you will be penalized for installing order.
Paul Valery
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.
Paul Valery
The dog has made man their God, if the dog was an atheist, it would be perfect.
Paul Valery
