Ernest Renan Quotes

Quotes about:

• A nation has a soul, a spiritual principle. One is in the past, the other in the present. One is the possession of a rich legacy of memories; the other is the desire to live together and to value the common heritage.

  Ernest Renan

  Spiritual, Peace, Memories

  31 Copy quote

• Muslims are the first victims of Islam. Many times I have observed in my travels in the Orient that fanaticism comes from a small number of dangerous men who maintain the others in the practice of religion by terror. To liberate the Muslim from his religion is the best service one can render him.

  Ernest Renan

  Men, Small Numbers, Practice

  55 Copy quote

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

  Ernest Renan

  Thinking, Opinion, Fixed

  86 Copy quote

• Forgetfulness, and I would even say historical error, are essential in the creation of a nation.

  Ernest Renan

  Errors, Historical, Essentials

  20 Copy quote

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

  Ernest Renan

  Beauty, Beautiful, Believe

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• A nation is a body of people who have done great things together.

  Ernest Renan

  People, Together, Done

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• The prayer of the agnostic: "O God, if there is a God, save my soul if I have a soul."

  Ernest Renan

  Prayer, If There Is A God, Soul

  9 Copy quote

• To act well in this world, one must sacrifice all personal desires. The people who become missionaries of religious thought have no other Fatherland than this thought. Man is not on Earth merely to be happy, nor even simply to be honest. He is here to realize great things for humanity, to attain nobility, and to surmount the vulgarity of nearly every individual.

  Ernest Renan

  Religious, Sacrifice, Men

  29 Copy quote

• Getting its history wrong is part of being a nation.

  Ernest Renan

  History, Nations

  13 Copy quote

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

  Ernest Renan

  Life, Impossible Things, People

  14 Copy quote

• It is through Christianity that Judaism has really conquered the world. Christianity is the masterpiece of Judaism.

  Ernest Renan

  World, Christianity, Judaism

  Ernest Renan, Joseph Henry Allen, Elizabeth Wormeley Latimer (1896). “History of the People of Israel ...: Period of Jewish independence and Judea under Roman rule. 1895”

  14 Copy quote

• The talent of historians lies in their creating a true ensemble out of facts which are but half true.

  Ernest Renan

  Lying, Creating, History

  12 Copy quote

• To be able to think freely, a man must be certain that no consequence will follow whatever he writes.

  Ernest Renan

  Freedom, Writing, Men

  15 Copy quote

• True Christianity, which will last forever, comes from the gospel words of Christ not from the epistles of Paul. The writings of Paul have been a danger and a hidden rock, the causes of the principal defects of Christian theology.

  Ernest Renan

  Christian, Writing, Rocks

  23 Copy quote

• Good humor is a philosophic state of mind; it seems to say to nature that we take her no more seriously than she takes us.

  Ernest Renan

  Happiness, Joy, Mind

  19 Copy quote

• Muslims are the first victims of Islam. To liberate a Muslim from his religion is the best service that one can render him!

  Ernest Renan

  Islam, Firsts, Victim

  26 Copy quote

• None of the miracles with which ancient histories are filled, occurred under scientific conditions. Observation never once contradicted, teaches us that miracles occur only in periods and countries in which they are believed in and before persons disposed to believe in them.

  Ernest Renan

  Country, Atheist, Believe

  Ernest Renan (2015). “Christ in Art”, p.52, Parkstone International

  18 Copy quote

• 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

  Reflection, Men, Atheism

  "Caliban: A Philosophical Drama Continuing 'The Tempest' of William Shakespeare". Book by Ernest Renan (Act 2, Scene 1), 1878.

  12 Copy quote

• Human cruelty took the form of a pact with the deity. A solemn oath was made to kill everything, in which people forbade themselves any display of reason or compassion. A city or a land was devoted to destruction and it was believed an insult to God if one did not observe the abominable oath.

  Ernest Renan

  Compassion, Land, Cities

  4 Copy quote

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

  Ernest Renan

  Struggle, Sacrifice, Ideas

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• Communism is in conflict with human nature.

  Ernest Renan

  Conflict, Human Nature, Communism

  "Les apôtres". Book by Ernest Renan, 1866.

  13 Copy quote

• The ignorance of French society gives one a rough sense of the infinite.

  Ernest Renan

  Travel, Home, Ignorance

  5 Copy quote

• A grain of sand leads to the fall of a mountain when the moment has come for the mountain to fall.

  Ernest Renan

  Fall, Mountain, Moments

  14 Copy quote

• 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. A great social revolution, in which rank will be overturned, in which all authority in this world will be humiliated, was his dream .

  Ernest Renan

  Dream, Jesus, Ideas

  9 Copy quote

• To have common glories in the past, a common will in the present; to have done great things together, to will to do the like again, — such are the essential conditions for the making of a people.

  Ernest Renan

  Past, People, Wish

  "The poetry of the Celtic races: and other studies".

  18 Copy quote

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