Paul Valery Quotes

At times I think and at times I am.

I am, therefore I'll think.

My thought is me: that's why I can't stop. I exist because I think… and I can't stop myself from thinking. At this very moment - it's frightful - if I exist, it is because I am horrified at existing. I am the one who pulls myself from the nothingness to which I aspire.

A long time ago, Descartes sad, “I think, therefore I am.” But if you are not thinking, what?

I think and that is all that I am.

To live is to think.

I think, therefore I am.

'Life', said Emerson, "consists in what a man is thinking all day." If that be so, then my life is nothing but a big intestine.

I desire therefore I exist.

I tell, therefore you are.

Sometime I think; and sometime I am.

All thought of something is at the same time self-consciousness [...] At the root of all our experiences and all our reflections, we find [...] a being which immediately recognises itself, [...] and which knows its own existence, not by observation and as a given fact, nor by inference from any idea of itself, but through direct contact with that existence. Self-consciousness is the very being of mind in action.

Descartes said, "I think, therefore I am." I say, "I do not think, that is why I exist."

Philosophy, which formerly raised man to feel conscious of himself because he was a thinking being and to say, 'I think therefore I am," now raises him to say ... "I think, therefore I am not," (unless he takes thought into consideration only in that humble region where it is confused with action).

I move, therefore I am.

I am. I am, I exist, I think, therefore I am; I am because I think, why do I think? I don't want to think any more, I am because I think that I don't want to be, I think that I . . . because . . . ugh!

The very act of questioning whether you exist proves you do, because you must be there for the doubt to be entertained in the first place.

I still live, I still think: I still have to live, for I still have to think.

I'm always aware that there are, broadly speaking, two different ways to act: there is acting, and then there's being, and I'm always more interested in that.

Transcendence constitutes selfhood.

Life is but thought.

I dream, therefore I exist.

My thought is me: that is why I cannot stop thinking. I exist because I think I cannot keep from thinking.

I--this thought which is called I--is the mould into which the world is poured like melted wax.

I find that when I do not think of myself I do not think at all.