Ernest Renan Quotes
"Our opinions become fixed at the point where we stop thinking."
- Ernest Renan
(Related: Opinions, Thinking)
"Religion is not a popular error; it is a great instinctive truth, sensed by the people, expressed by the people."
- Ernest Renan
(Related: Religion, Truth, People, Error, Popular)
"The greatest men of a nation are those it puts to death."
- Ernest Renan
(Related: Death, Men, Nation)
"The liberty of the individual is a necessary postulate of human progress."
- Ernest Renan
(Related: Progress, Liberty)
"The simplest schoolboy is now familiar with truths for which Archimedes would have sacrificed his life."
- Ernest Renan
(Related: Life, Now)
"When people complain of life, it is almost always because they have asked impossible things of it."
- Ernest Renan
(Related: Life, People)
"In morals, truth is but little prized when it is a mere sentiment, and only attains its full value when realized in the world as fact."
- Ernest Renan
(Related: Truth, Fact, Morals, Sentiment, Value, World)
"No idea can succeed except at the expense of sacrifice; no one ever escapes without enduring strain from the struggle of life."
- Ernest Renan
(Related: Life, Idea, Sacrifice, Struggle, Succeed)
"To conceive the good, in fact, is not sufficient; it must be made to succeed among men. To accomplish this less pure paths must be followed."
- Ernest Renan
(Related: Men, Fact, Succeed)
"As a rule, all heroism is due to a lack of reflection, and thus it is necessary to maintain a mass of imbeciles. If they once understand themselves the ruling men will be lost."
- Ernest Renan
(Related: Men, Heroism, Reflection, Will)
"Man makes holy what he believes."
- Ernest Renan
(Related: Man)
"All history is incomprehensible without Christ."
- Ernest Renan
(Related: History, Christ)
"All the great things of humanity have been accomplished in the name of absolute principles."
- Ernest Renan
(Related: Humanity, Name, Principles)
"Blessed are the blind, for they know not enough to ask why."
- Ernest Renan
(Related: Blind)
"Communism is in conflict with human nature."
- Ernest Renan
(Related: Nature, Communism, Conflict, Human nature)
"God, if there is a God, take my soul, if I have a soul."
- Ernest Renan
(Related: God, Soul)
"He whom God has touched will always be a being apart: he is, whatever he may do, a stranger among men; he is marked by a sign."
- Ernest Renan
(Related: God, Men, Being, May, Will)
"I can die when I wish to: that is my elixir of life."
- Ernest Renan
(Related: Life)
"Let us remember that sorrow alone is the creator of great things."
- Ernest Renan
(Related: Sorrow)