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:

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

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

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

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.

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.

Ernest Renan

I can die when I wish to: that is my elixir of life.

Ernest Renan

Our opinions become fixed at the point where we stop thinking.

Ernest Renan

Getting its history wrong is part of being a nation.

Ernest Renan

Let us remember that sorrow alone is the creator of great things.

Ernest Renan

All the great things of humanity have been accomplished in the name of absolute principles.

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.

Ernest Renan

When people complain of life, it is almost always because they have asked impossible things of it.

Ernest Renan

God, if there is a God, take my soul, if I have a soul.

Ernest Renan

No idea can succeed except at the expense of sacrifice; no one ever escapes without enduring strain from the struggle of life.

Ernest Renan

Communism is in conflict with human nature.

Ernest Renan

The liberty of the individual is a necessary postulate of human progress.

Ernest Renan

Blessed are the blind, for they know not enough to ask why.

Ernest Renan

All history is incomprehensible without Christ.

Ernest Renan

The greatest men of a nation are those it puts to death.

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.

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.

Ernest Renan

Man makes holy what he believes, as he makes beautiful what he loves.

Ernest Renan