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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

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Jean Rostand
Age: 82 †
Born: 1894
Born: October 30
Died: 1977
Died: September 4
Biologist
Historian
Philosopher
Writer
Paris
France
Built
Whose
Ideal
Certain
Basis
Men
Bases
Think
Ideals
Thinking
Image
Worse
Judgment

More quotes by Jean Rostand

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Kill one man, and you are murderer.
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One must credit an hypothesis with all that has had to be discovered in order to demolish it.
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Prerequisite for rereadability in books: that they be forgettable.
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The books one has written in the past have two surprises in store: one couldn't write them again, and wouldn't want to.
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Beauty in art is often nothing but ugliness subdued.
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Never feel remorse for what you have thought about your wife she has thought much worse things about you.
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Greatness, in order to gain recognition, must all too often consent to ape greatness.
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Being right is less important to us than the freedom to be wrong.
Jean Rostand
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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. Kill a man, and you are an assassin. Kill millions of men and you are a conqueror. Kill everyone, and you are a god.
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The least one can say of power is that a vocation for it is suspicious.
Jean Rostand
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The biologist passes. The frog stays the same.
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To love an idea is to love it a little more than one should.
Jean Rostand
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In order to remain true to oneself one ought to renounce one's party three times a day.
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The nobility of a human being is strictly independent of that of his convictions.
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Nothing leads the scientist so astray as a premature truth.
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We find it easy to believe that praise is sincere: why should anyone lie in telling us the truth?
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Truth is always served by great minds, even if they fight it.
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I prefer the honest jargon of reality to the outright lies of books.
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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.
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Le biologiste passe, la grenouille reste. The biologist passes, the frog remains.
Jean Rostand