Jean Rostand Quotes (59 Quotes)

I don't judge a regime by the damning criticism of the opposition, but by the ingenuous praise of the partisan.

It is sometimes important for science to know how to forget the things she is surest of.

Nothing leads the scientist so astray as a premature truth.

In politics, yesterday's lie is attacked only to flatter today's.

Hatred, for the man who is not engaged in it, is a little like the odor of garlic for one who hasn't eaten any.

Greatness, in order to gain recognition, must all too often consent to ape greatness.

Kill a man one is a murderer kill a million, a conqueror kill them all, a God.

The least one can say of power is that a vocation for it is suspicious.

Never feel remorse for what you have thought about your wife; she has thought much worse things about you.

The divine is perhaps that quality in man which permits him to endure the lack of God.

It is sometimes well for a blatant error to draw attention to overmodest truths.

We must watch over our modesty in the presence of those who cannot understand its grounds.

Prerequisite for rereadability in books that they be forgettable.

Nothing is more admirable than the fortitude with which millionaires tolerate the disadvantages of their wealth.

It is not easy to imagine how little interested a scientist usually is in the work of any other, with the possible exception of the teacher who backs him or the student who honors him.

I should have no use for a paradise in which I should be deprived of the right to prefer hell.

A married couple are well suited when both partners usually feel the need for a quarrel at the same time.

There are moments when very little truth would be enough to shape opinion. One might be hated at extremely low cost.

It may offend us to hear our own thoughts expressed by others: we are not sure enough of their souls.

There are certain moments when we might wish the future were built by men of the past.

Certain brief sentences are peerless in their ability to give one the feeling that nothing remains to be said.

To say of men that they are bad is to say they are worse than we think we are, or worse than the ideal man whose image we have built up on the basis of a certain few.

The ideal, without doubt, varies, but its enemies, alas, are always the same.

One must either take an interest in the human situation or else parade before the void.

Renown? I've already got more of it than those I respect, and will never have as much as those for whom I feel contempt.

To reflect is to disturb one's thoughts.

Far too often the choices reality proposes are such as to take away one's taste for choosing.

Truth is always served by great minds, even if they fight it.

Stupidity, outrage, vanity, cruelty, iniquity, bad faith, falsehood - we fail to see the whole array when it is facing in the same direction as we.

It takes a very deep-rooted opinion to survive unexpressed.

God, that dumping ground of our dreams.

A few great minds are enough to endow humanity with monstrous power, but a few great hearts are not enough to make us worthy of using it.

Whether man is disposed to yield to nature or to oppose her, he cannot do without a correct understanding of her language

Think? Why think! We have computers to do that for us.

A man is not old as long as he is seeking something.

Science has made us gods even before we are worthy of being men.

We are not nanve enough to ask for pure men we ask merely for men whose impurity does not conflict with the obligations of their job.

A body of work such as Pasteur's is inconceivable in our time: no man would be given a chance to create a whole science. Nowadays a path is scarcely opened up when the crowd begins to pour in.

One must credit an hypothesis with all that has had to be discovered in order to demolish it.

In order to remain true to oneself one ought to renounce one's party three times a day.

To be adult is to be alone.

We spend our time envying people whom we wouldn't wish to be.

I still understand a few words in life, but I no longer think they make a sentence.

Already at the origin of the species man was equal to what he was destined to become.

Theories pass. The frog remains.

I think I am one of those who can manage not to take on a completely different appearance under their own glance.

Somebody told me I should put a pebble in my mouth to cure my stuttering. Well, I tried it, and during a scene I swallowed the pebble. That was the end of that.

Take heed of critics even when they are not fair; resist them even when they are.

The nobility of a human being is strictly independent of that of his convictions.

I prefer the honest jargon of reality to the outright lies of books.