"The history of thought may be summed up in these words: it is absurd by what it seeks and great by what it finds.“


-Paul Valery

posted in history


The history of thought may be summed up in these words: it is absurd by what it seeks and great by what it finds.

Other Quotes You Might Like

Discover more inspiring quotes from our collection

"An artist never really finishes his work, he merely abandons it."

-Paul Valery

workView Quote
"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

warView Quote
"The trouble with our times is that the future is not what it used to be."

-Paul Valery

timeView Quote
"History is the science of things which are not repeated."

-Paul Valery

scienceView Quote
"Science means simply the aggregate of all the recipes that are always successful. All the rest is literature."

-Paul Valery

scienceView Quote
"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."

-Paul Valery

scienceView Quote

More Quotes About history

Explore other inspiring quotes in this category

"Literature overtakes history, for literature gives you more than one life. It expands experience and opens new opportunities to readers."

-Carlos Fuentes

historyView Quote
"If I had been elected president in 1948, history would be vastly different. I believe we would have stemmed the growth of Big Government, which had begun with the New Deal and culminated with the Great Society."

-Strom Thurmond

historyView Quote
"For most of our history, Americans enjoyed both liberty and security from foreign threats."

-Harry Browne

historyView Quote
"There is nothing glorious about what our ancestors call history. It is simply a succession of mistakes, intolerances and violations."

-Claude Vorilhon

historyView Quote
"This is a good time to ask apologists for the Islamic regime, who degrades Islam? Who imposes stoning, forced marriage of underage girls and flogging for not wearing the veil? Do such practices represent Iran's ancient history and culture, its ethnic and religious diversity? Its centuries of sensual and subversive poetry?"

-Azar Nafisi

historyView Quote
"What would be the nicest thing I could say about Newt Gingrich? He may be one of the great supporters of the humanities, because you have people who don't want to study the social sciences, because it's not profitable, and now Newt, as the highest-paid historian in American history, may be an encouragement to people to study history."

-Barney Frank

historyView Quote