Ernest Renan

"There has always been an element of the magical in the style of M. Ernest Renan—an art of saying things in a way to make them beautiful."

"Getting its history wrong is part of being a nation"

"To write well is to think well; there is no art of style distinct from the culture of the mind. The good writer is a complete mind, gifted with judgment, passion, imagination, and at the same time well trained. The inner qualities of rectitude, of brilliant geniality, are not given; instruction, wealth of information, fulness of knowledge, are acquired. Thus good training of the mind is the only school of good style. Wanting that, you have merely rhetoric and bad taste."

"A Muslim who knows French will never be a dangerous Muslim."

"The Semites did not understand the variety, the plurality, the genders in God: the word goddess in Hebrew is the most horrible barbarism."

"The true Semitic society is that of the tent and of the tribe."

"Nature, on the other hand, plays a very small role in the Semitic religions: the desert is monotheistic; sublime in its immense uniformity, it primarily revealed to man the idea of 'infinite.'"

"Thus, the Semitic race is recognizable almost solely through negative characteristics: it has neither mythology, nor epic, nor science, nor philosophy, nor fiction, nor plastic arts, nor civil life; in sum an absence of complexity, of nuance, an exclusive sentiment of unity."

"No place in the world has had a comparable role to that of the nameless mountain or valley where mankind first attained self-consciousness. Let us be proud ... of the old patriarchs who, at the foot of Imaiis, laid the foundations of what we are and of what we shall become."

"A famous student of history has bequeathed to us a definition of nationality which is worth attention: I refer to Ernest Renan, of whom George Meredith once said to me, while the great French critic was still living, that there was more in his head than in any other head in Europe. Renan tells us that "Man is enslaved neither by his race, nor by his language, nor by his religion, nor by the course of rivers, nor by the direction of mountain ranges. A great aggregation of men, sane of mind and warm of heart, creates a moral consciousness which is called a nation.""

"To be free in an age like ours, one must be in a position of authority. That in itself would be enough to make me ambitious."

"All agreed in rejecting that blasphemy, that Greece was ever a province of Asia, that the Greek spirit, so free, so objective, so limpid, could contain any element of the vague and obscure spirit of the Orient."

"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."

"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."

"Thus the Semitic race is to be recognized almost entirely by negative characteristics. It has neither mythology, nor epic, nor science, nor philosophy, nor fiction, nor plastic arts, nor civil life; in everything there is a complete absence of complexity, subtlety or feeling, except for unity. It has no variety in its monotheism."

"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."

"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."

"To conceive the good, in fact, is not sufficient; it must be made to succeed among men. To accomplish this less pure paths must be followed."

"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."

"Let us pardon him his hope of a vain apocalypse, and of a second coming in great triumph upon the clouds of heaven. Perhaps these were the errors of others rather than his own; and if it be true that he himself shared the general illusion, what matters it, since his dream rendered him strong against death, and sustained him in a struggle to which he might otherwise have been unequal?"

"La colonisation en grand est une nécessité politique tout à fait de premier ordre. Une nation qui ne colonise pas est irrévocablement vouée au socialisme, à la guerre du riche et du pauvre. La conquête d'un pays de race inférieure par une race supérieure, qui s'y établit pour le gouverner, n'a rien de choquant."

"We aspire not to equality but to domination. Countries inhabited by foreign races must become again countries of serfs, farm laborers, and factory workers. The goal is not to suppress inequities, but, rather, to amplify them and to make of them a matter of course."

"La régénération des races inférieures ou abâtardies par les races supérieures est dans l'ordre providentiel de l'humanité. L'homme du peuple est presque toujours chez nous un noble déclassé ; sa lourde main est bien mieux faite pour manier l'épée que l'outil servile. Plutôt que de travailler, il choisit de se battre, c'est- à-dire qu'il revient à son premier état. ."

"Regere imperio populos, voilà notre vocation."

"La nature a fait une race d'ouvriers ; c'est la race chinoise, d'une dextérité de main merveilleuse sans presque aucun sentiment d'honneur; gouvernez-la avec justice , en prélevant d'elle pour le bienfait d'un tel gouvernement un ample douaire au profit de la race conquérante, elle sera satisfaite ; une race de travailleurs de la terre, c'est le nègre ; soyez pour lui bon et humain, et tout sera dans l'ordre; -- une race de maîtres et de soldats, c'est la race européenne ."

"I can die when I wish to: that is my elixir of life."

"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."

"Religion ist kein populärer Irrtum; sie ist eine große Wahrheit des Instinktes, von Menschen geahnt, von Menschen zum Ausdruck gebracht."

"Eine Dynastie selbst ist im Grund nichts anderes als ein beständiger und geregelter Terrorismus."

"Die Nation ist ein in sich täglich wiederholendes Plebiszit."

"Bei jeder Art von Größe besteht der bleibende Ruhm darin, den Grundstein gelegt zu haben."

"Die Geschichte aller großen religiösen Krisen beweist, daß diese Arten von Visionen sich mittheilen: in einer Gesellschaft, in welcher sich Menschen desselben Glaubens finden, genügt es, daß ein Glied dieser Verbindung behauptet, etwas Uebernatürliches zu sehen oder zu hören, damit die anderen auch sehen oder hören."

"Wer möchte nicht lieber krank wie Pascal sein, als gesund wie der große Haufe?"

"Aber man bewahrt immer den Stempel seiner Abkunft."

"In der Moral wie in der Kunst ist Reden nichts, Thun alles."

"So wird Jesus nicht blos denen angehören, die sich seine Schüler nennen. Es ist die gemeinsame Ehre aller, welche ein menschliches Herz haben. Sein Ruhm besteht nicht darin, aus der Geschichte verbannt zu werden: man erzeigt ihm eine wahrere Verehrung, wenn man nachweist, daß die ganze Geschichte ohne ihn unverständlich ist."