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Top 15 Paul de Man Quotes (2025 Update)

Paul de Man Quote: “Metaphors are much more tenacious than facts.”

1. “Metaphors are much more tenacious than facts.”

— Paul de Man

Paul de Man Quote: “And to read is to understand, to question, to know, to forget, to erase, to deface, to repeat – that is to say, the endless prosopopoeia by which the dead are made to have a face and a voice which tells the allegory of their demise and allows us to apostrophize them in our turn. No degree of knowledge can ever stop this madness, for it is the madness of words.”

2. “And to read is to understand, to question, to know, to forget, to erase, to deface, to repeat – that is to say, the endless prosopopoeia by which the dead are made to have a face and a voice which tells the allegory of their demise and allows us to apostrophize them in our turn. No degree of knowledge can ever stop this madness, for it is the madness of words.”

— Paul de Man

Paul de Man Quote: “The critical method which denies literary modernity would appear – and even, in certain respects, would be – the most modern of critical movements.”

3. “The critical method which denies literary modernity would appear – and even, in certain respects, would be – the most modern of critical movements.”

— Paul de Man

Paul de Man Quote: “Modernity exists in the form of a desire to wipe out whatever came earlier, in the hope of reaching at least a point that could be called a true present, a point of origin that marks a new departure.”

4. “Modernity exists in the form of a desire to wipe out whatever came earlier, in the hope of reaching at least a point that could be called a true present, a point of origin that marks a new departure.”

— Paul de Man

Paul de Man Quote: “What we call ideology is precisely the confusion of linguistic with natural reality, of reference with phenomenalism.”

5. “What we call ideology is precisely the confusion of linguistic with natural reality, of reference with phenomenalism.”

— Paul de Man

Paul de Man Quote: “The bases for historical knowledge are not empirical facts but written texts, even if these texts masquerade in the guise of wars or revolutions.”

6. “The bases for historical knowledge are not empirical facts but written texts, even if these texts masquerade in the guise of wars or revolutions.”

— Paul de Man

Paul de Man Quote: “Death is a displaced name for a linguistic predicament.”

7. “Death is a displaced name for a linguistic predicament.”

— Paul de Man

Paul de Man Quote: “Literature exists at the same time in the modes of error and truth; it both betrays and obeys its own mode of being.”

8. “Literature exists at the same time in the modes of error and truth; it both betrays and obeys its own mode of being.”

— Paul de Man

Paul de Man Quote: “Fashion is like the ashes left behind by the uniquely shaped flames of the fire, the trace alone revealing that a fire actually took place.”

9. “Fashion is like the ashes left behind by the uniquely shaped flames of the fire, the trace alone revealing that a fire actually took place.”

— Paul de Man

Paul de Man Quote: “If one reads too quickly or too slowly, one understands nothing.”

10. “If one reads too quickly or too slowly, one understands nothing.”

— Paul de Man

Paul de Man Quote: “Curiously enough, it seems to be only in describing a mode of language which does not mean what it says that one can actually say what one means.”

11. “Curiously enough, it seems to be only in describing a mode of language which does not mean what it says that one can actually say what one means.”

— Paul de Man

Paul de Man Quote: “The ambivalence of writing is such that it can be considered both an act and an interpretive process that follows after an act with which it cannot coincide. As such, it both affirms and denies its own nature.”

12. “The ambivalence of writing is such that it can be considered both an act and an interpretive process that follows after an act with which it cannot coincide. As such, it both affirms and denies its own nature.”

— Paul de Man

Paul de Man Quote: “Prior to any generalization about literature, literary texts have to be read, and the possibility of reading can never be taken for granted. It is an act of understanding that can never be observed, nor in any way prescribed or verified.”

13. “Prior to any generalization about literature, literary texts have to be read, and the possibility of reading can never be taken for granted. It is an act of understanding that can never be observed, nor in any way prescribed or verified.”

— Paul de Man

Paul de Man Quote: “The writer’s language is to some degree the product of his own action; he is both the historian and the agent of his own language.”

14. “The writer’s language is to some degree the product of his own action; he is both the historian and the agent of his own language.”

— Paul de Man

Paul de Man Quote: “Literature involves the voiding, rather than the affirmation, of aesthetic categories.”

15. “Literature involves the voiding, rather than the affirmation, of aesthetic categories.”

— Paul de Man

Paul de Man Quote: “When modern critics think they are demystifying literature, they are in fact being demystified by it. But since this necessarily occurs in the form of a crisis, they are blind to what takes place within themselves. What they call anthropology, linguistics, psychoanalysis, is nothing but literature reappearing like the hydra’s head in the very spot where it had been suppressed. The human mind will go through amazing feats to avoid facing ‘the nothingness of human matters’.”

16. “When modern critics think they are demystifying literature, they are in fact being demystified by it. But since this necessarily occurs in the form of a crisis, they are blind to what takes place within themselves. What they call anthropology, linguistics, psychoanalysis, is nothing but literature reappearing like the hydra’s head in the very spot where it had been suppressed. The human mind will go through amazing feats to avoid facing ‘the nothingness of human matters’.”

— Paul de Man

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