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Ernest Renan

40 quotes

“To be free in an age like ours, one must be in a position of authority. That in itself would be enough to make me ambitious.”
Ernest Renan (1823–1892) first seen 1841 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to his elder sister Henriette (1841).
“All agreed in rejecting that blasphemy, that Greece was ever a province of Asia, that the Greek spirit, so free, so objective, so limpid, could contain any element of the vague and obscure spirit of the Orient.”
Ernest Renan (1823–1892) first seen 1853 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Des Religions de l’antiquité et leurs derniers historiens”, Mondes, vol. 23, no. 2 (1853) p. 835, quoted in Suzanne L. Marchand, German Orientalism in the Age of Empire: Religion, Race, and Scholarship (Cambridge Univer…
“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 (1823–1892) first seen 1878 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Orlando, in Caliban, act 2, sc. 1 (1878).
“[L]e communisme étant contraire à la nature humaine.”
Ernest Renan (1823–1892) first seen 1866 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Les Apôtres (Paris: Michel Lévy Frères, 1866), p. 242.
“The Semites did not understand the variety, the plurality, the genders in God: the word goddess in Hebrew is the most horrible barbarism.”
Ernest Renan (1823–1892) said by 1892 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As translated in Stefan Arvidsson, Aryan Idols: Indo-European Mythology as Ideology and Science, trans. Sonia Wichmann (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), p. 95.
“Nature, on the other hand, plays a very small role in the Semitic religions: the desert is monotheistic; sublime in its immense uniformity, it primarily revealed to man the idea of 'infinite.'”
Ernest Renan (1823–1892) said by 1892 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As translated in Stefan Arvidsson, Aryan Idols: Indo-European Mythology as Ideology and Science, trans. Sonia Wichmann (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), p. 95.
“The true Semitic society is that of the tent and of the tribe.”
Ernest Renan (1823–1892) said by 1892 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As translated in Stefan Arvidsson, Aryan Idols: Indo-European Mythology as Ideology and Science, trans. Sonia Wichmann (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), p. 96.
“Thus, the Semitic race is recognizable almost solely through negative characteristics: it has neither mythology, nor epic, nor science, nor philosophy, nor fiction, nor plastic arts, nor civil life; in sum an absence of complexity, of nuance, an exclusive sentiment of unity.”
Ernest Renan (1823–1892) said by 1892 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As translated in Stefan Arvidsson, Aryan Idols: Indo-European Mythology as Ideology and Science, trans. Sonia Wichmann (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), p. 96.
“The greatest men of a nation are often those whom it puts to death.”
Ernest Renan (1823–1892) said by 1892 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1823–1892) said by 1892 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Never has any one been less a priest than Jesus, never a greater enemy of forms, which stifle religion under the pretext of protecting it. By this we are all his disciples and his successors; by this he has laid the eternal foundation-stone of true religion; and if religion is essential to humanity, he has by this deserved the Divine rank the world has accorded him.”
Ernest Renan (1823–1892) said by 1892 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1823–1892) said by 1892 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[I]n morals, truth is but little prized when it is a mere sentiment, and only attains its full value when realized in the wirld as fact.”
Ernest Renan (1823–1892) said by 1892 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Jesus, in some respects, was an anarchist, for he had no idea of civil government. That government seems to him purely and simply an abuse.”
Ernest Renan (1823–1892) said by 1892 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Let us pardon him his hope of a vain apocalypse, and of a second coming in great triumph upon the clouds of heaven. Perhaps these were the errors of others rather than his own; and if it be true that he himself shared the general illusion, what matters it, since his dream rendered him strong against death, and sustained him in a struggle to which he might otherwise have been unequal?”
Ernest Renan (1823–1892) said by 1892 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All the great deeds of humanity have been accomplished in the name of absolute principles.”
Ernest Renan (1823–1892) said by 1892 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“La colonisation en grand est une nécessité politique tout à fait de premier ordre. Une nation qui ne colonise pas est irrévocablement vouée au socialisme, à la guerre du riche et du pauvre. La conquête d'un pays de race inférieure par une race supérieure, qui s'y établit pour le gouverner, n'a rien de choquant.”
Ernest Renan (1823–1892) said by 1892 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We aspire not to equality but to domination. Countries inhabited by foreign races must become again countries of serfs, farm laborers, and factory workers. The goal is not to suppress inequities, but, rather, to amplify them and to make of them a matter of course.”
Ernest Renan (1823–1892) said by 1892 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: as translated by Asselin Charles, in "Colonial Discourse Since Christopher Columbus," Journal of Black Studies, Vol. 26, No. 2 (November 1995), p. 147
“La régénération des races inférieures ou abâtardies par les races supérieures est dans l'ordre providentiel de l'humanité. L'homme du peuple est presque toujours chez nous un noble déclassé ; sa lourde main est bien mieux faite pour manier l'épée que l'outil servile. Plutôt que de travailler, il choisit de se battre, c'est- à-dire qu'il revient à son premier état. .”
Ernest Renan (1823–1892) said by 1892 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 93, as translated by Asselin Charles, in "Colonial Discourse Since Christopher Columbus," Journal of Black Studies, Vol. 26, No. 2 (November 1995), 147
“Regere imperio populos, voilà notre vocation.”
Ernest Renan (1823–1892) said by 1892 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“La nature a fait une race d'ouvriers ; c'est la race chinoise, d'une dextérité de main merveilleuse sans presque aucun sentiment d'honneur; gouvernez-la avec justice , en prélevant d'elle pour le bienfait d'un tel gouvernement un ample douaire au profit de la race conquérante, elle sera satisfaite ; une race de travailleurs de la terre, c'est le nègre ; soyez pour lui bon et humain, et tout sera dans l'ordre; -- une race de maîtres et de soldats, c'est la race européenne .”
Ernest Renan (1823–1892) said by 1892 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Inequality is one of nature's written laws, it is the consequence of liberty and the liberty of the individual is a necessary postulate of human progress.”
Ernest Renan (1823–1892) said by 1892 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I would by far have an immoral people than a fanatical people for immoral masses are by no means difficult to deal with while fanatical masses reduce the world to a state of imbecility.”
Ernest Renan (1823–1892) said by 1892 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It has become a hackneyed truth by now to say that the world is governed by ideas.”
Ernest Renan (1823–1892) said by 1892 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is nothing more motionless than the nonentity who has never lived the intellectual life, or the dullard who has never seen aught but one side of things. The way not to vary is not to think.”
Ernest Renan (1823–1892) said by 1892 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Science has no enemies save those who consider truth as useless and making no difference, and those who granting to truth its priceless value profess to get at it by other roads than those of criticism and rational investigation.”
Ernest Renan (1823–1892) said by 1892 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Endeavour to be beautiful, and then do at every moment that with which your heart will inspire you;" that is morality in a nutshell.”
Ernest Renan (1823–1892) said by 1892 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As translated in Irving Babbitt, Rousseau and Romanticism (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1919), Ch. IV, p. 133.
“The lofty serenity of science only becomes possible on the condition of impartial criticism, which without regard for the beliefs of a certain portion of humanity, handles its imperturbable instrument with the inflexibility of the geometrician, without anger and without pity. The critic never insults.”
Ernest Renan (1823–1892) said by 1892 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Our principle is that we should regulate our present life just as if the future life did not exist, that it is never justifiable to refer to what is beyond in extenuation of any social condition or action. To appeal incessantly to the future life is to deaden the spirit of reform, to relax the zeal for the rational organization of humanity.”
Ernest Renan (1823–1892) said by 1892 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I, as a man of culture, do not find any evil in myself, and I am impelled spontaneously towards what seems to me the most noble. If all others had as much culture as myself, they would all, like myself, be incapable of doing an evil act. Then it might be said with truth: you are gods and sons of the Most High.”
Ernest Renan (1823–1892) said by 1892 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Irving Babbitt, Rousseau and Romanticism (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1919), Ch. IV, pp. 133–134.
“Morality has hitherto been conceived in a very narrow spirit, as obedience to a law, as an internal struggle between contradictory laws. For my own part, I can declare that when I do right, I do not obey anyone, that I do not engage in any struggle or win any victory.... The man of elevation has only to follow the pleasant beat of his inward impulse.”
Ernest Renan (1823–1892) said by 1892 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As translated in Irving Babbitt, Rousseau and Romanticism (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1919), Ch. IV, p. 133. (Some lines are omitted after "no victory", but there is no ellipse to indicate this.) Babbitt comments…
“He whom God has touched will always be a being apart; he is, no matter what he does, out of place among men, he is known by a sign.”
Ernest Renan (1823–1892) said by 1892 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“L'amour est la meilleure preuve de Dieu; c'est notre lien ombilical avec la nature, notre vraie communion avec l'infini.”
Ernest Renan (1823–1892) said by 1892 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“La charme n'a pas à se justifier; son triomphe est la preuve de sa légitimité.”
Ernest Renan (1823–1892) said by 1892 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Le grand amour aime la solitude: il n'a pas besoin du reste du monde.”
Ernest Renan (1823–1892) said by 1892 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Les soucis positifs de notre temps ne font que rendre la poésie plus nécessaire. Elle est, avec la religion bien comprise, le baume qui adoucit et console, la voix qui dit en nous: Sursum corda!”
Ernest Renan (1823–1892) first seen 1888 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Discors prononcé a l'inauguration de la statue de Brizeux" (9 September 1888), p. 63.
“Jamais un musulman qui sait le français ne sera un musulman dangereux.”
Ernest Renan (1823–1892) first seen 1888 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Conférence faite a l'Alliance pour la propagation de la langue française" (February 1888), p. 263.
“La gaieté a cela de très philosophique qu'elle semble dire à la nature que nous ne le prenons pas plus au sérieux qu'elle ne nous prend nous-mêmes.”
Ernest Renan (1823–1892) first seen 1884 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Henri-Frédéric Amiel" (September 1884), p. 397.
“I can die when I wish to: that is my elixir of life.”
Ernest Renan (1823–1892) said by 1892 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You may take great comfort from the fact that suffering inwardly for the sake of truth proves abundantly that one loves it and marks one out as being of the elect.”
Ernest Renan (1823–1892) said by 1892 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source