Formerly, leaders of states practiced realism, but did not honor it. With them morality was violated, but moral notions remained intact. The modern governor, owing to the fact that he addresses crowds, is compelled to be a moralist, and to… — Julien Benda Copy Share Image
Peace is only possible if men cease to place their happiness in the possession of things "which cannot be shared," and if they raise… — Julien Benda Copy Share Image
Philosophy, which formerly raised man to feel conscious of himself because he was a thinking being and to say, 'I think therefore I am,"… — Julien Benda Copy Share Image
And History will smile to think that this is the species for which Socrates and Jesus Christ died. — Julien Benda Copy Share Image
Nothing seems to me more doubtful than Aristotle's remark that it is probable the arts and philosophy have several times been discovered and several… — Julien Benda Copy Share Image
It may be said that modern Europe with teachers who inform it that its realist instincts are beautiful, acts ill and honors what is… — Julien Benda Copy Share Image
Peace is only possible if men cease to place their happiness in the possession of things which cannot be shared. — Julien Benda Copy Share Image
Christianity exhorted man to set himself up against Nature, but did so in the name of his spiritual and disinterested attributes. Pragmatism exhorts him to do so in the name of his practical attributes. Formerly man was divine because he had been able to acquire the concept of justice, the idea of law, the sense of God; today he is… — Julien Benda Copy Share
The modern moralists extol ... the cult of practical activity in defiance of the disinterested life. — Julien Benda Copy Share Image
The man of science, the artist, the philosopher are attached to their nations as much as the day-laborer and the merchant. — Julien Benda Copy Share Image
I shall go further and say that even if an examination of the past could lead to any valid prediction concerning man's future, that… — Julien Benda Copy Share Image
The true clerc is Vauvenargues, Lamarck, Fresnel, Spinoza, Schiller, Baudelaire, César Franck, who were never diverted from single-hearted adoration of the beautiful and the… — Julien Benda Copy Share Image
Since the Greeks the predominant attitude of thinkers towards intellectual activity was to glorify it insofar as (like aesthetic activity) it finds its satisfaction… — Julien Benda Copy Share Image
