Georges Duhamel quotes

Georges Duhamel was a French author, essayist, and physician, recognized for his humanistic writings and pacifist ideals. Noteworthy for his multi-volume novel cycle "Chronique des Pasquier," his works often focused on the values of compassion and solidarity. He also served as secretary of the Académie française and advocated for cultural and moral renewal in France. Here are 33 of his quotes:

I have too much respect for the idea of God to make it responsible for such an absurd world.

Georges Duhamel

I can no longer think what I want to think. My thoughts have been replaced by moving images.

Georges Duhamel

Do not trust your memory; it is a net full of holes; the most beautiful prizes slip through it.

Georges Duhamel

Let us lose none of their humble words, let us note their slightest gestures, and tell me, tell me that we will think of them together, now and later, when we realise the misery of the times and the magnitude of their sacrifice.

Georges Duhamel

In the beds which the piety of the public has prepared on every side, stricken men await the verdict of fate.

Georges Duhamel

Just as we say "listening and hearing,” "looking and seeing,” so we ought to have two expressions to distinguish active reading from passive.

Georges Duhamel

Is it possible to create a maintain a true culture, a strong and flourishing culture, through the medium of pictoral and oral apparatus?

Georges Duhamel

Radio, on the other hand, is now the chief agent of imperialism. It does not purify the spirit of man, does not, like the book, bring him back to the sanctuary of solitude, but throws him to the lions, subtly preparing his mind for the blood and chains of public sacrifice.

Georges Duhamel

M. André Mayer ... made an astonishing confidence not long ago. "The laboratories,” he said, "are working at this moment with splendid results. In physics and biology, for example, we can predict new and very important discoveries. What is humanity going to do with the power which will soon be put into its hands? Humanity is not yet ready to receive this power. It is not in a state to make good use of it.” The events of the moment prove that this power, of which we know very little yet, and which is announced to us with such proper reserve, has little chance of serving the cause of man straight away. It will more probably be employed, or rather confiscated, for the benefit of the ambitious, the impudent, and the reckless.

Georges Duhamel

Radio and cinema are daily playing a more and more important part, not only in the amusements of the twentieth-century man but also in the visible formation of his character.

Georges Duhamel

If the public gets out of the habit of reading they will not come back to it. We shall enter a new phase of our history from which there is no turning back.

Georges Duhamel

In books may be found the recipes for manufacture of a steam-engine alongside the recipes for daily living-the prescriptions for the mind and the heart.

Georges Duhamel

... a pastime for helots, a diversion for uneducated, wretched, worn-out creatures who are consumed by their worries, ... a spectacle which requires no concentration and presupposes no intelligence,... which kindles no light in the heart and awakens no hope other than the ridiculous one of someday becoming a ‘star' in Los Angeles.

Georges Duhamel

The book is one of the springs of creative individualism, that individualism which, in these uncertain times, remains the guardian angel of human society. For five hundred years the book has been, for the solitary mind, an incomparable instrument of uplift and liberation.

Georges Duhamel

For many people in the future, radio will take the place of an inner life.

Georges Duhamel

The instinct to synthesize is a good one so long as it is concerned with elements that are capable of forming a whole. But today the man in the street is fed, morally as well as physically, on a mass of debris which has no resemblance to a nourishing diet. There is no method in this madness, which is the very negation of culture.

Georges Duhamel

Culture is at once the expression and the reward of an effort, and any system of civilization which tends to relax effort will suffer a corresponding depreciation of culture.

Georges Duhamel

Use your radio, but know how to distrust it-and do not let a day go by without reading and meditation if you want to save your soul, that soul which is yours and yours alone.

Georges Duhamel

What a teacher imparts by word of mouth is nothing in comparison with what he teaches us to get for ourselves from books.

Georges Duhamel

One of my friends whom I hold in high esteem admitted to me the other day that when he wants to work nowadays ... he has to turn on his radio. The droning of the loudspeaker-so he says-puts him in a favorable frame of mind and ideas pour out. I cannot help but thinking that this is not the act of a true musician. For thought has a rhythm of its own, which must either clash with the rhythm from outside and lose energy, or else submit to the outer impulse in restless slavery.

Georges Duhamel

It is an extraordinary thing that this civilization, which wears out our nerves and exacts an almost painful effort from us in all our doings, should be at great pains to spare the mass of people that intellectual effort which is the only measure of true culture.

Georges Duhamel

When I say, "Beware of the radio if you want to improve your mind,” ... I am warning the public against their worst enemy, conformity.

Georges Duhamel