Jean Rostand famous quotes

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

#People #Envy #Gossip

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

#Education #Men #Made

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.
-- Jean Rostand

#Death #Badass #Men

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.
-- Jean Rostand

#Beautiful #Regret #Mistake

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

#Giving #Feelings #Said

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.
-- Jean Rostand

#Heart #Power #Humanity

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

#Science #Discovery #Order

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

#Love #Ideas #Littles

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

#Knowledge #Important #Sometimes

A man is not old as long as he is seeking something.
-- Jean Rostand

#Time #Men #Long

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.
-- Jean Rostand

#Faith #Stupid #Vanity

To be adult is to be alone.
-- Jean Rostand

#Time #Loneliness #Being Alone

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

#Funny #Marriage #Witty

Beauty in art is often nothing but ugliness subdued.
-- Jean Rostand

#Beauty #Art #Being Beautiful

Theories pass. The frog remains.
-- Jean Rostand

#Frogs #Theory #Remains

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

#Thinking #Computer #Classroom

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

#Independent #Belief #Conviction

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

#Book #Writing #Past

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

#Believe #Long #Giving

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

#Use #Paradise #Hell

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

#Thinking #Different #Appearance

Kill one man, and you are murderer
-- Jean Rostand

#Men #Murderer

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.
-- Jean Rostand

#Men #Thinking #Certain

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

#Truth #Littles #Might

God, that checkroom of our dreams.
-- Jean Rostand

#God #Dream

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

#Criticism #Critics

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

#Party #Order #Three

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.
-- Jean Rostand

#Jobs #Teaching #Men

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

#Self Worth #Important

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

#Past #Men #Wish

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

#Men #Yield #Understanding

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

#Believe #Goal #Atheism

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

#People #Copies

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

#Cutting #Size #Wells

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

#Art #Sacrifice #Income

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

#Eye #Artist #Inspire

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

#Struggle #Goal #Desire

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.
-- Jean Rostand

#Believe #Return #Praise

In our ideals we unwittingly reveal our vices.
-- Jean Rostand

#Vices

Marriage simplifies life and complicates the day.
-- Jean Rostand

#Marriage #Simplify

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

#Past #Government #Color

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

#Inspirational #Men #Murderer

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

#Inspirational #Pity #Young

Prerequisite for rereadability in books: that they be forgettable.
-- Jean Rostand

#Book #Forgettable

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

#Lying #Believe #Recognition

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

#Circles #Literature #Careful

The biologist passes. The frog stays the same.
-- Jean Rostand

#Frogs #Biologist

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

#Truth #Race #Littles

Nothing leads the scientist so astray as a premature truth.
-- Jean Rostand

#Truth #Scientist

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

#Judging #Criticism #Praise

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

#Greatness #Order #Gains

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

#Destiny #Men #Equal

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.
-- Jean Rostand

#Pebbles #Mouths #Scene

To reflect is to disturb one's thoughts.
-- Jean Rostand

#Thinking

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

#Watches #Modesty

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

#Opinion #Very Deep

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

#Agreement #Soul #May

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

#Lying #Yesterday #Politics

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.
-- Jean Rostand

#Men #Hatred #Atheism

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

#Funny #Pessimism #Sincerity

Far too often the choices reality proposes are such as to take away one's taste for choosing.
-- Jean Rostand

#Reality #Choices #Taste

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

#Anniversary #Marriage #Couple

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

#Truth #Fighting #Mind

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

#Void #Parades #Interest

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

#Doubt #Enemy #Vary

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

#Truth #Errors #Attention

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

#Frogs #Facts #Grenouille

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?
-- Jean Rostand

#Life #Growing Up #Light

Science had better not free the minds of men too much, before it has tamed their instincts.
-- Jean Rostand

#Science #Men #Mind

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.
-- Jean Rostand

#God #Men #Assassins

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

#Lying #Book #Reality

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

#Thinking #Understanding #Few Words

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.
-- Jean Rostand

#Book #Men #Years

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

#Atheist #Men #Quality

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..
-- Jean Rostand

#Fame #Renown #Contempt

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.
-- Jean Rostand

#Truth #Future #Science

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.
-- Jean Rostand

#Teacher #Hard Work #Science

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.
-- Jean Rostand

#Time #Hard Work #Science

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

#Power #Vocation

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

#Military #Men #Assassins