Ernest Renan quotes

Ernest Renan was a French historian, philosopher, and writer renowned for his influential works on religion and national identity. His book "Life of Jesus" sparked intense debate in 19th-century Europe and challenged traditional religious views. He shaped modern approaches to the study of history and culture through his critical scholarship. Here are 29 of his quotes:

The simplest schoolboy is now familiar with truths for which Archimedes would have sacrificed his life. (Ernest Renan)
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. View quote
Ernest Renan
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. View quote
Ernest Renan
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. View quote
Ernest Renan
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. View quote
Ernest Renan
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. View quote
Ernest Renan
I can die when I wish to: that is my elixir of life. View quote
Ernest Renan
Our opinions become fixed at the point where we stop thinking. View quote
Ernest Renan
Getting its history wrong is part of being a nation. View quote
Ernest Renan
Let us remember that sorrow alone is the creator of great things. View quote
Ernest Renan
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)
All the great things of humanity have been accomplished in the name of absolute principles. View quote
Ernest Renan
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. View quote
Ernest Renan
When people complain of life, it is almost always because they have asked impossible things of it. View quote
Ernest Renan
God, if there is a God, take my soul, if I have a soul. View quote
Ernest Renan
No idea can succeed except at the expense of sacrifice; no one ever escapes without enduring strain from the struggle of life. View quote
Ernest Renan
Communism is in conflict with human nature. View quote
Ernest Renan
The liberty of the individual is a necessary postulate of human progress. View quote
Ernest Renan
Blessed are the blind, for they know not enough to ask why. View quote
Ernest Renan
All history is incomprehensible without Christ. View quote
Ernest Renan
Religion is not a popular error; it is a great instinctive truth, sensed by the people, expressed by the people. (Ernest Renan)
The greatest men of a nation are those it puts to death. View quote
Ernest Renan
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. View quote
Ernest Renan
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. View quote
Ernest Renan
Man makes holy what he believes, as he makes beautiful what he loves. View quote
Ernest Renan