Jean Rostand Quotations

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

To love an idea is to love it a little more than one should.

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.

One kills a man, one is an assassin; one kills millions, one is a conqueror; one kills everybody, one is a god.

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

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.

My pessimism extends to the point of even suspecting the sincerity of other pessimists.

Beauty in art is often nothing but ugliness subdued.

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

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

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

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

When a scientist is ahead of his times, it is often through misunderstanding of current, rather than intuition of future truth. In science there is never any error so gross that it won't one day, from some perspective, appear prophetic.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

Falsity cannot keep an idea from being beautiful; there are certain errors of such ingenuity that one could regret their not ranking among the achievements of the human mind.

One kills a man, one is an assassin; one kills millions, one is a conqueror; one kills everybody, one is a god

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.

Kill one man, and you are murderer

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

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..

There are big and little truths, but all belong to the same race.

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.

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.

Le biologiste passe, la grenouille reste. The biologist passes, the frog remains.

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

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

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

On tue un homme, on est un assassin. On tue des millions d'hommes, on est un conquérant. On les tue tous, on est un dieu. Kill a man, and you are an assassin. Kill millions of men and you are a conqueror. Kill everyone, and you are a god.

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

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

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

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 discovered the laws of heredity: thirty-five years later, three men rediscover them. But the book that is not written will never be written. The premature death of a great scientist delays humanity; that of a great writer deprives it.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

God, that checkroom of our dreams.

On the brink of being satiated, desire still appears infinite.

Prerequisite for rereadability in books: that they be forgettable.

When I was young I pitied the old. Now old, it is the young I pity.

Kill one man and you're a murderer, kill a million and you're a conqueror.

It is horrible to see everything that one detested in the past coming back wearing the colors of the future.

Marriage simplifies life and complicates the day.

In our ideals we unwittingly reveal our vices.

We bestow on others praise in which we do not believe, on condition that in return they bestow upon us praise in which we do.

To live is often to struggle toward goals one has no desire to reach.

To be able to observe with a stranger's eye helps one to see with an artist's eye. What alienates us inspires.

In art as in life the valid sacrifices are those that bring no income.

Quotations--always inexact. I don't trust people who cannot even copy out.

There are some persons we could not cut down to size without diminishing ourselves as well.

What makes our opponents useful is that they allow us to believe that without them we would be able to realize our goals.

The biologist passes. The frog stays the same.

We find it easy to believe that praise is sincere: why should anyone lie in telling us the truth?

Literature: proclaiming in front of everyone what one is careful to conceal from one's immediate circle

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

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 job.

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

The books one has written in the past have two surprises in store: one couldn't write them again, and wouldn't want to.

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

There are things that don't deserve to be said briefly.

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

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

We give others praise which we ourselves don't believe, as long as they respond with praise we can believe.

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

Nothing leads the scientist so astray as a premature truth.

Theories pass. The frog remains.

To be adult is to be alone.

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

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

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.

Being right is less important to us than the freedom to be wrong.