The simplest school boy is now familiar with truths for which Archimedes would have sacrificed his life.
—Ernest Renan
Topics: Progress
A grain of sand leads to the fall of a mountain when the moment has come for the mountain to fall.
—Ernest Renan
Topics: Trifles
When people complain of life, it is almost always because they have asked impossible things of it.
—Ernest Renan
Topics: Complaining, Complaints, Pessimism
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
Topics: Control, Authority
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
Topics: Heroism, Heroes/Heroism, Heroes
No idea can succeed except at the expense of sacrifice; no one ever escapes without enduring strain from the struggle of life.
—Ernest Renan
Topics: Sacrifice
The greatest men of a nation are those it puts to death.
—Ernest Renan
Topics: Greatness, Greatness & Great Things
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
Topics: Spirit, Spirituality
Our opinions become fixed at the point where we stop thinking.
—Ernest Renan
Topics: Opinion, Think, Become, Opinions, Thinking
Man makes holy what he believes, as he makes beautiful what he loves.
—Ernest Renan
Topics: Faith, Belief
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
Topics: Goodness
As soon as sacrifice becomes a duty and necessity to mankind. I see no limit to the horizon which opens before him.
—Ernest Renan
Topics: Sacrifice
I can die when I wish to: that is my elixir of life.
—Ernest Renan
Topics: Death, Dying
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