Quotes by "Ernest Renan"

Muslims are the first victims of Islam. [...] To liberate the Muslim from his religion is the best service that one can render him.

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 that one can render him.

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.

No idea can succeed except at the expense of sacrifice; no one ever escapes without enduring strain from the struggle of life.

The liberty of the individual is a necessary postulate of human progress.

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.

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.

The simplest schoolboy is now familiar with truths for which Archimedes would have sacrificed his life.

Religion is not a popular error; it is a great instinctive truth, sensed by the people, expressed by the people.

Man is not on this earth merely to be happy, or even to be simply honest. He is there to realize great things for humanity, to attain nobility and to surmount the vulgarity of almost everybody.