69 Quotes by Ernest Renan

Forgetfulness, and I would even say historical error, are essential in the creation of a nation.

Man makes holy what he believes as he makes beautiful what he loves.

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

A nation has a soul, a spiritual principle. One is in the past, the other in the present. One is the possession of a rich legacy of memories; the other is the desire to live together and to value the common heritage.

To act well in this world, one must sacrifice all personal desires. The people who become missionaries of religious thought have no other Fatherland than this thought. Man is not on Earth merely to be happy, nor even simply to be honest. He is here to realize great things for humanity, to attain nobility, and to surmount the vulgarity of nearly every individual.

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 one can render him.

The prayer of the agnostic: “O God, if there is a God, save my soul if I have a soul.”

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. A great social revolution, in which rank will be overturned, in which all authority in this world will be humiliated, was his dream .

To have common glories in the past, a common will in the present; to have done great things together; to wish to do greater; these are the essential conditions which make up a people.