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Who said: “I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, ... finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell ... whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.”
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Home > Dictionary of Science Quotations > Scientist Names Index V > Paul Valéry Quotes

Paul Valéry
(30 Oct 1871 - 20 Jul 1945)

French poet, essayist and philosopher.

Science Quotes by Paul Valéry (10 quotes)

A man who is ‘of sound mind’ is one who keeps the inner madman under lock and key.
— Paul Valéry
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Science quotes on:  |  Inner (72)  |  Keep (104)  |  Key (56)  |  Lock (14)  |  Madman (6)  |  Man (2252)  |  Medicine (392)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Sound (187)

God made everything out of nothing. But the nothingness shows through.
— Paul Valéry
Mauvaises pensées et autres (1942). In Bill Swainson and Anne H. Soukhanov. Encarta Book of Quotations (2000), 951.
Science quotes on:  |  Creation (350)  |  Everything (489)  |  God (776)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Nothingness (12)  |  Show (353)  |  Through (846)

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 Valéry
In W.H. Auden and ‎Louis Kronenberger, The Viking Book of Aphorisms: A Personal Selection, (1966), 98.
Science quotes on:  |  Change (639)  |  Exist (458)  |  Figure (162)  |  Geometry (271)  |  Increase (225)  |  Physical (518)  |  Physical World (30)  |  Pure (299)  |  Quality (139)  |  Quantity (136)  |  Similar (36)  |  Size (62)  |  World (1850)

One had to be a Newton to notice that the moon is falling, when everyone sees that it doesn’t fall.
— Paul Valéry
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Science quotes on:  |  Everyone (35)  |  Fall (243)  |  Moon (252)  |  Sir Isaac Newton (363)  |  Notice (81)  |  See (1094)

Science is a collection of successful recipes.
— Paul Valéry
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Science quotes on:  |  Collection (68)  |  Recipe (8)  |  Successful (134)

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 Valéry
In Moralités (1932). Reprinted in J. Matthews (ed.), Collected Works (1970). As cited in Robert Andrews (ed.), The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations (1993), 810.
Science quotes on:  |  Art (680)  |  Artist (97)  |  Aspiration (35)  |  Clear (111)  |  Combination (150)  |  Condition (362)  |  Distinct (98)  |  Distinction (72)  |  Do (1905)  |  Enumerated (3)  |  Feasibility (4)  |  Formula (102)  |  Interest (416)  |  Lie (370)  |  Making (300)  |  Tendency (110)  |  Variable (37)  |  Work (1402)

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 Valéry
In John Bartlett, Familiar Quotations: A Collection of Passages, Phrases, and Proverbs Traced (1968), 857.
Science quotes on:  |  Discovery (837)  |  Folly (44)  |  Inborn (4)  |  Metaphor (37)  |  Oneself (33)  |  Oracle (5)  |  Paradox (54)  |  Proof (304)  |  Spring (140)  |  Torrent (5)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Verbiage (3)

The object of psychology is to give us a totally different idea of the things we know best.
— Paul Valéry
Tel quel (1943). In Bill Swainson and Anne H. Soukhanov. Encarta Book of Quotations (2000), 951.
Science quotes on:  |  Best (467)  |  Different (595)  |  Idea (881)  |  Know (1538)  |  Object (438)  |  Psychology (166)  |  Thing (1914)

The only truths which are universal are those gross enough to be thought so.
— Paul Valéry
Mauvaises pensées et autres (1942). In Bill Swainson and Anne H. Soukhanov. Encarta Book of Quotations (2000), 951.
Science quotes on:  |  Enough (341)  |  Thought (995)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Universal (198)

The term Science should not be given to anything but the aggregate of the recipes that are always successful. All the rest is literature.
— Paul Valéry
Moralités (1932). In Bill Swainson and Anne H. Soukhanov. Encarta Book of Quotations (2000), 951.
Science quotes on:  |  Aggregate (24)  |  Literature (116)  |  Rest (287)  |  Successful (134)  |  Term (357)


Carl Sagan Thumbnail In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion. (1987) -- Carl Sagan
Quotations by:Albert EinsteinIsaac NewtonLord KelvinCharles DarwinSrinivasa RamanujanCarl SaganFlorence NightingaleThomas EdisonAristotleMarie CurieBenjamin FranklinWinston ChurchillGalileo GalileiSigmund FreudRobert BunsenLouis PasteurTheodore RooseveltAbraham LincolnRonald ReaganLeonardo DaVinciMichio KakuKarl PopperJohann GoetheRobert OppenheimerCharles Kettering  ... (more people)

Quotations about:Atomic  BombBiologyChemistryDeforestationEngineeringAnatomyAstronomyBacteriaBiochemistryBotanyConservationDinosaurEnvironmentFractalGeneticsGeologyHistory of ScienceInventionJupiterKnowledgeLoveMathematicsMeasurementMedicineNatural ResourceOrganic ChemistryPhysicsPhysicianQuantum TheoryResearchScience and ArtTeacherTechnologyUniverseVolcanoVirusWind PowerWomen ScientistsX-RaysYouthZoology  ... (more topics)
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- 100 -
Sophie Germain
Gertrude Elion
Ernest Rutherford
James Chadwick
Marcel Proust
William Harvey
Johann Goethe
John Keynes
Carl Gauss
Paul Feyerabend
- 90 -
Antoine Lavoisier
Lise Meitner
Charles Babbage
Ibn Khaldun
Euclid
Ralph Emerson
Robert Bunsen
Frederick Banting
Andre Ampere
Winston Churchill
- 80 -
John Locke
Bronislaw Malinowski
Bible
Thomas Huxley
Alessandro Volta
Erwin Schrodinger
Wilhelm Roentgen
Louis Pasteur
Bertrand Russell
Jean Lamarck
- 70 -
Samuel Morse
John Wheeler
Nicolaus Copernicus
Robert Fulton
Pierre Laplace
Humphry Davy
Thomas Edison
Lord Kelvin
Theodore Roosevelt
Carolus Linnaeus
- 60 -
Francis Galton
Linus Pauling
Immanuel Kant
Martin Fischer
Robert Boyle
Karl Popper
Paul Dirac
Avicenna
James Watson
William Shakespeare
- 50 -
Stephen Hawking
Niels Bohr
Nikola Tesla
Rachel Carson
Max Planck
Henry Adams
Richard Dawkins
Werner Heisenberg
Alfred Wegener
John Dalton
- 40 -
Pierre Fermat
Edward Wilson
Johannes Kepler
Gustave Eiffel
Giordano Bruno
JJ Thomson
Thomas Kuhn
Leonardo DaVinci
Archimedes
David Hume
- 30 -
Andreas Vesalius
Rudolf Virchow
Richard Feynman
James Hutton
Alexander Fleming
Emile Durkheim
Benjamin Franklin
Robert Oppenheimer
Robert Hooke
Charles Kettering
- 20 -
Carl Sagan
James Maxwell
Marie Curie
Rene Descartes
Francis Crick
Hippocrates
Michael Faraday
Srinivasa Ramanujan
Francis Bacon
Galileo Galilei
- 10 -
Aristotle
John Watson
Rosalind Franklin
Michio Kaku
Isaac Asimov
Charles Darwin
Sigmund Freud
Albert Einstein
Florence Nightingale
Isaac Newton


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