Jean Rostand Quotes

81 quotes in 843 categories

• The divine is perhaps that quality in man which permits him to endure the lack of God.
• If a given scientist had not made a given discovery, someone else would have done so a little later. Johann Mendel dies unknown after having…
• I still understand a few words in life, but I no longer think they make a sentence.
• Kill one man, and you are a murderer. Kill millions of men, and you are a conqueror. Kill them all, and you are a god.
• I prefer the honest jargon of reality to the outright lies of books.
• It is sometimes important for science to know how to forget the things she is surest of.
• Science had better not free the minds of men too much, before it has tamed their instincts.
• What scientist would not long to go on living, if only to see how the little truths he has brought to light will grow up?
• It is sometimes well for a blatant error to draw attention to overmodest truths.
• Nothing leads the scientist so astray as a premature truth.
• There are big and little truths, but all belong to the same race.
• There are moments when very little truth would be enough to shape opinion. One might be hated at extremely low cost.
• Take heed of critics even when they are not fair; resist them even when they are.
• We are not naïve enough to ask for pure men; we ask merely for men whose impurity does not conflict with the obligations of their…
• Being right is less important to us than the freedom to be wrong.
• 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…
• We spend our time envying people whom we wouldn't wish to be.
• In order to remain true to oneself one ought to renounce one's party three times a day.
• God, that checkroom of our dreams.
• There are certain moments when we might wish the future were built by men of the past.

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