Peace is only possible if men cease to place their happiness in the possession of things "which cannot be shared," and if they raise themselves to a …

- Julien Benda

The modern moralists extol ... the cult of practical activity in defiance of the disinterested life.

- Julien Benda

Since the Greeks the predominant attitude of thinkers towards intellectual activity was to glorify it insofar as (like aesthetic activity) it finds i…

- Julien Benda

The modern clercs have created in so-called cultivated society a positive romanticism of harshness. The have also created a romanticism of contempt.

- Julien Benda

Christianity exhorted man to set himself up against Nature, but did so in the name of his spiritual and disinterested attributes. Pragmatism exhorts …

- Julien Benda

Peace, if it ever exists, will not be based on the fear of war but on the love of peace.

- Julien Benda

The man of science, the artist, the philosopher are attached to their nations as much as the day-laborer and the merchant.

- Julien Benda

And History will smile to think that this is the species for which Socrates and Jesus Christ died.

- Julien Benda

Peace, if it ever exists, will not be based on the fear of war, but on the love of peace. It will not be the abstaining from an act, but the coming o…

- Julien Benda