"Hamlet, Kiekegaard, Kafka are ironists in the wake of Jesus. All Western irony is a repetition of Jesus' enigmas/riddles, in amalgam with the ironies of Socrates."

5 quotes

🇫🇷Paul Valéry

Literature

1871–1945

"The greatest liberty is born of the greatest rigor."

43 quotes

Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk

Politics

1850–1937

"A great many people really care very little for their own compatriots, but they hate anything foreign."

"Significantly, the 14 most transnational firms originate from small countries"

"Out there, in the world, all the walls were covered with graffiti: 'Yids, go back to Palestine,' so we came back to Palestine, and now the worldatlarge shouts at us: 'Yids, get out of Palestine.'"

"No civilization, no matter how mighty it may appear to itself, is indestructible."

28 quotes

Notable Quotes

"Poe is the only impeccable writer. He was never mistaken."

— Paul Valéry, b. 1871View →

"Reason, sometimes, seems to me to be the faculty our soul possesses of understanding nothing about our body!"

— Paul Valéry, b. 1871View →

"So much of liberalism in its classical sense is taken for granted in the West today and even disrespected. We take freedom for granted, and because of this we don't understand how incredibly vulnerable it is."

— Niall Ferguson, b. 1964View →

"What are mortals for?—Their business is to know. Know? And what is to know?—It is assuredly: not to be what one is.—And so here are humans raving and thinking, introducing into nature the principle of unlimited error, and myriads of marvels!"

— Paul Valéry, b. 1871View →

"The purpose of psychology is to give us a completely different idea of the things we know best."

— Paul Valéry, b. 1871View →

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