Explore Quotes by Jean Rostand

God, that dumping ground of our dreams.

Prerequisite for rereadability in books: that they be forgettable.

We find it easy to believe that praise is sincere: why should anyone lie in telling us the truth?

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

Somebody told me I should put a pebble in my mouth to cure my stuttering. Well, I tried it, and during a scene I swallowed the pebble. That was the end of that.

Already at the origin of the species man was equal to what he was destined to become.

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

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

To reflect is to disturb one's thoughts.

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

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

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

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.

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.