Jean Rostand
28 quotes
Biography
Jean Edmond Cyrus Rostand was a French biologist, historian of science, and philosopher.
"Beauty in art is often nothing but ugliness subdued."
"Science has made us gods even before we are worthy of being men."
"Kill a man and you're a murderer. Kill many and you're a conqueror. Kill them all, you're a god."
"Science had better not free the minds of men too much, before it has tamed their instincts."
"On tue un homme, on est un assassin. On tue des millions d'hommes, on est un conquérant. On les tue tous, on est un dieu."
"La science a fait de nous des dieux avant même que nous méritions d'être des hommes."
"To be adult is to be alone."
"God, that dumping ground of our dreams."
"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."
"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."
"There are certain moments when we might wish the future were built by men of the past."
"One kills a man, one is an assassin one kills millions, one is a conqueror one kills everybody, one is a god."
"Truth is always served by great minds, even if they fight it."
"Never feel remorse for what you have thought about your wife she has thought much worse things about you."
"In politics, yesterday's lie is attacked only to flatter today's."
"A few great minds are enough to endow humanity with monstrous power, but a few great hearts are not enough to make us worthy of using it."
"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."
"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."
"It is sometimes important for science to know how to forget the things she is surest of."
"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."
"Truth is always served by great minds, even if they fight it."
"The obligation to endure gives us the right to know."
"The least one can say of power is that a vocation for it is suspicious."
"Nothing leads the scientist so astray as a premature truth."