Ernest Renan (1823 – 1892)
French philosopher, playwright, and writer.
Page 1 of 1
The liberty of the individual is a necessary postulate of human progress.
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.
Religion is not a popular error; it is a great instinctive truth, sensed by the people, expressed by the people.
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.
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.
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?
Man makes holy what he believes.
When people complain of life, it is almost always because they have asked impossible things of it.
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.
All the great things of humanity have been accomplished in the name of absolute principles.
The greatest men of a nation are those it puts to death.
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.
Communism is in conflict with human nature.
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.
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.
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.
The simplest schoolboy is now familiar with truths for which Archimedes would have sacrificed his life.
Page 1 of 1