Ernest Renan
Ernest Renan
Joseph Ernest Renan was a French Orientalist and Semitic scholar, writing on Semitic languages and civilizations, historian of religion, philologist, philosopher, biblical scholar, and critic. He wrote works on the origins of early Christianity, and espoused popular political theories especially concerning nationalism, national identity, and the superiority of white people over other human races.
"Science has no enemies save those who consider truth as useless and making no difference, and those who granting to truth its priceless value profess to get at it by other roads than those of criticism and rational investigation."
Ernest Renan"I, as a man of culture, do not find any evil in myself, and I am impelled spontaneously towards what seems to me the most noble. If all others had as much culture as myself, they would all, like myself, be incapable of doing an evil act. Then it might be said with truth: you are gods and sons of the Most High."
Ernest Renan"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."
Ernest Renan"[L]e communisme étant contraire à la nature humaine."
Ernest Renan"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."
Ernest Renan"The greatest men of a nation are often those whom it puts to death."
Ernest Renan"The Semites did not understand the variety, the plurality, the genders in God: the word goddess in Hebrew is the most horrible barbarism."
Ernest Renan"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."
Ernest Renan"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 dun pays de race inférieure par une race supérieure, qui sy établit pour le gouverner, na rien de choquant."
Ernest Renan"There is nothing more motionless than the nonentity who has never lived the intellectual life, or the dullard who has never seen aught but one side of things. The way not to vary is not to think."
Ernest Renan"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."
Ernest Renan"La nature a fait une race douvriers ; cest la race chinoise, dune dextérité de main merveilleuse sans presque aucun sentiment dhonneur; gouvernez-la avec justice , en prélevant delle pour le bienfait dun tel gouvernement un ample douaire au profit de la race conquérante, elle sera satisfaite ; une race de travailleurs de la terre, cest le nègre ; soyez pour lui bon et humain, et tout sera dans lordre; -- une race de maîtres et de soldats, cest la race européenne ."
Ernest Renan
