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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.
Jean Rostand -
The nobility of a human being is strictly independent of that of his convictions.
Jean Rostand
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I don't judge a regime by the damning criticism of the opposition, but by the ingenuous praise of the partisan.
Jean Rostand -
One must either take an interest in the human situation or else parade before the void.
Jean Rostand -
I should have no use for a paradise in which I should be deprived of the right to prefer hell.
Jean Rostand -
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.
Jean Rostand -
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.
Jean Rostand -
The least one can say of power is that a vocation for it is suspicious.
Jean Rostand
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Certain brief sentences are peerless in their ability to give one the feeling that nothing remains to be said.
Jean Rostand -
There are certain moments when we might wish the future were built by men of the past.
Jean Rostand -
In order to remain true to oneself one ought to renounce one's party three times a day.
Jean Rostand -
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.
Jean Rostand -
Never feel remorse for what you have thought about your wife; she has thought much worse things about you.
Jean Rostand -
There are moments when very little truth would be enough to shape opinion. One might be hated at extremely low cost.
Jean Rostand
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To reflect is to disturb one's thoughts.
Jean Rostand -
In politics, yesterday's lie is attacked only to flatter today's.
Jean Rostand -
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.
Jean Rostand -
Truth is always served by great minds, even if they fight it.
Jean Rostand -
One must credit an hypothesis with all that has had to be discovered in order to demolish it.
Jean Rostand -
The ideal, without doubt, varies, but its enemies, alas, are always the same.
Jean Rostand
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It takes a very deep-rooted opinion to survive unexpressed.
Jean Rostand -
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.
Jean Rostand -
It is sometimes important for science to know how to forget the things she is surest of.
Jean Rostand -
Beauty in art is often nothing but ugliness subdued.
Jean Rostand