Quotes by Rostand, Jean




Jean Rostand (October 30, 1894 - September 3, 1977), French biologist and philosopher..

"A man is not old as long as he is seeking something."

Rostand, Jean on age and aging
4 fans of this quote    Share


"Renown? I've already got more of it than those I respect, and will never have as much as those for whom I feel contempt.."

Rostand, Jean on fame    Share

"There are certain moments when we might wish the future were built by men of the past."

Rostand, Jean on the future    Share

"It may offend us to hear our own thoughts expressed by others: we are not sure enough of their souls."

Rostand, Jean on agreement    Share

"God, that dumping ground of our dreams."

Rostand, Jean on god    Share

"God, that checkroom of our dreams."

Rostand, Jean on god    Share

"I don't judge a regime by the damning criticism of the opposition, but by the ingenuous praise of the partisan."

Rostand, Jean on government    Share

"Greatness, in order to gain recognition, must all too often consent to ape greatness."

Rostand, Jean on greatness    Share

"To hate fatigues."

Rostand, Jean on hatred    Share

"The ideal, without doubt, varies, but its enemies, alas, are always the same."

Rostand, Jean on ideals and idealism    Share

"To love an idea is to love it a little more than one should."

Rostand, Jean on ideas
3 fans of this quote    Share

"One must either take an interest in the human situation or else parade before the void."

Rostand, Jean on involvement    Share

"To say of men that they are bad is to say they are worse than we think we are, or worse than the ideal man whose image we have built up on the basis of a certain few."

Rostand, Jean on judgment and judges    Share

"Certain brief sentences are peerless in their ability to give one the feeling that nothing remains to be said."

Rostand, Jean on aphorisms and epigrams
3 fans of this quote    Share

"It is sometimes well for a blatant error to draw attention to overmodest truths."

Rostand, Jean on mistakes    Share

"Falsity cannot keep an idea from being beautiful; there are certain errors of such ingenuity that one could regret their not ranking among the achievements of the human mind."

Rostand, Jean on mistakes    Share

"We must watch over our modesty in the presence of those who cannot understand its grounds."

Rostand, Jean on modesty    Share

"It takes a very deep-rooted opinion to survive unexpressed."

Rostand, Jean on opinions    Share

"I should have no use for a paradise in which I should be deprived of the right to prefer hell."

Rostand, Jean on paradise
3 fans of this quote    Share

"The divine is perhaps that quality in man which permits him to endure the lack of God."

Rostand, Jean on atheism    Share

"In politics, yesterday's lie is attacked only to flatter today's."

Rostand, Jean on politics    Share

"In order to remain true to oneself one ought to renounce one's party three times a day."

Rostand, Jean on politics    Share

"A few great minds are enough to endow humanity with monstrous power, but a few great hearts are not enough to make us worthy of using it."

Rostand, Jean on power    Share

"The least one can say of power is that a vocation for it is suspicious."

Rostand, Jean on power    Share

"Stupidity, outrage, vanity, cruelty, iniquity, bad faith, falsehood -- we fail to see the whole array when it is facing in the same direction as we."

Rostand, Jean on prejudice
4 fans of this quote    Share

"We are not na?ve enough to ask for pure men; we ask merely for men whose impurity does not conflict with the obligations of their job."

Rostand, Jean on purity    Share

"I prefer the honest jargon of reality to the outright lies of books."

Rostand, Jean on reality    Share

"It is not easy to imagine how little interested a scientist usually is in the work of any other, with the possible exception of the teacher who backs him or the student who honors him."

Rostand, Jean on science    Share

"It is sometimes important for science to know how to forget the things she is surest of."

Rostand, Jean on science    Share

"A body of work such as Pasteur's is inconceivable in our time: no man would be given a chance to create a whole science. Nowadays a path is scarcely opened up when the crowd begins to pour in."

Rostand, Jean on science    Share

"Nothing leads the scientist so astray as a premature truth."

Rostand, Jean on science    Share

"When a scientist is ahead of his times, it is often through misunderstanding of current, rather than intuition of future truth. In science there is never any error so gross that it won't one day, from some perspective, appear prophetic."

Rostand, Jean on science    Share

"I think I am one of those who can manage not to take on a completely different appearance under their own glance."

Rostand, Jean on self-image    Share

"Beauty in art is often nothing but ugliness subdued."

Rostand, Jean on beauty    Share

"The nobility of a human being is strictly independent of that of his convictions."

Rostand, Jean on belief    Share

"Prerequisite for rereadability in books: that they be forgettable."

Rostand, Jean on books - reading    Share

"The books one has written in the past have two surprises in store: one couldn't write them again, and wouldn't want to."

Rostand, Jean on books - reading    Share

"One must credit an hypothesis with all that has had to be discovered in order to demolish it."

Rostand, Jean on theory    Share

"To reflect is to disturb one's thoughts."

Rostand, Jean on thoughts and thinking    Share

"Truth is always served by great minds, even if they fight it."

Rostand, Jean on truth    Share

But wait... There are more: 1, 2 next

Take a look at recent activity on QB!

 

Search Quotations Book