Author

Paul Valery

24 quotations

About Paul Valery

Ambroise Paul Toussaint Jules Valéry was a French poet, essayist, and philosopher. In addition to his poetry and fiction, his interests included aphorisms on art, history, letters, music, and current events.

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Topics: Science Poetry Art Future History Politics
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.
The trouble with our times is that the future is not what it used to be.
Science means simply the aggregate of all the recipes that are always successful. All the rest is literature.
The folly of mistaking a paradox for a discovery, a metaphor for a proof, a torrent of verbiage for a spring of capital truths, and oneself for an oracle, is inborn in us.

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Politics is the art of preventing people from busying themselves with what is their own business.
The history of thought may be summed up in these words: it is absurd by what it seeks and great by what it finds.
God made everything out of nothing, but the nothingness shows through.
Politics is the art of preventing people from busying themselves with what is their own business.
Our judgments judge us, and nothing reveals us, exposes our weaknesses, more ingeniously than the attitude of pronouncing upon our fellows.
Politics is the art of preventing people from busying themselves with what is their own business.
God created man and, finding him not sufficiently alone, gave him a companion to make him feel his solitude more keenly.