Ernest Renan Quotes
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Blessed are the blind, for they know not enough to ask why.
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His glory Jesus Christ does not consist in beingplaced without the confines of history; a more real worship is paid to him, by showing that the whole of history is incomprehensible without him.
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The prayer of the agnostic: "O God, if there is a God, save my soul if I have a soul."
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He whom God has touched will always be a being apart: he is, whatever he may do, a stranger among men; he is marked by a sign.
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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.
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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.
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The ignorance of French society gives one a rough sense of the infinite.
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Communism is in conflict with human nature.
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Our opinions become fixed at the point where we stop thinking.
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You may take great comfort from the fact that suffering inwardly for the sake of truth proves abundantly that one loves it and marks one out as being of the elect.
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The liberty of the individual is a necessary postulate of human progress.
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The virtue of man is, in a word, the great proof of God.
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Never has any one been less a priest than Jesus, never a greater enemy of forms, which stifle religion under the pretext of protecting it. By this we are all his disciples and his successors; by this he has laid the eternal foundation-stone of true religion; and if religion is essential to humanity, he has by this deserved the Divine rank the world has accorded him.
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In morals, truth is but little prized when it is a mere sentiment, and only attains its full value when realized in the world as fact.
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Getting its history wrong is part of being a nation.
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As soon as sacrifice becomes a duty and necessity to mankind. I see no limit to the horizon which opens before him.
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Morality has been conceived up to the present in a very narrow spirit, as obedience to a law, as inner struggle between opposite laws. As for me, I declare that when I do good I obey no one, I fight no battle and win no victory. The cultivated person has only to follow the delicious incline of his or her inner impulses. Be beautiful and then do at each moment whatever your heart may inspire you to do. This is the whole of morality.
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Relax yourself from one job by doing a different one.
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The talent of historians lies in their creating a true ensemble out of facts which are but half true.
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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 .
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Forgetfulness, and I would even say historical error, are essential in the creation of a nation.
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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.
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The only way of salvation for the world is by returning to thy allegiance.... Firm in my faith, I shall have force to withstand my evil counsellors, my skepticism, which leads me to doubt of the people, my restless spirit which, after truth has been brought to light, impels to go on searching for it.
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The greatest men of a nation are those it puts to death.
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It is evident, indeed, that such a doctrine, taken by itself in a literal manner, had no future. The world, in continuing to exist, caused it to crumble. One generation of man at the most was the limit of its endurance. The faith of the first Christian generation is intelligible, but the faith of the second generation is no longer so. After the death of John, or of the last survivor, whoever he might be, of the group which had seen the master, the word of Jesus was convicted of falsehood.
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All the great things of humanity have been accomplished in the name of absolute principles.
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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.
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All history is incomprehensible without Christ.
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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.
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Jesus was the greatest religious genius that ever lived.
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