Ernest Renan
Ernest Renan
Joseph Ernest Renanwas a French expert of Middle East ancient languages and civilizations, philosopher, historian, and writer, devoted to his native province of Brittany. He is best known for his influential historical works on early Christianity, and his political theories, especially concerning nationalism and national identity. Renan is credited as being among the first scholars to advance the Khazar theory, which held that Ashkenazi Jews were descendants of Turkic peoples who had adopted Jewish religion and migrated to Western Europe...
NationalityFrench
ProfessionHistorian
Date of Birth28 February 1823
CountryFrance
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. To liberate a Muslim from his religion is the best service that one can render him!
Man makes holy what he believes as he makes beautiful what he loves.
It is through Christianity that Judaism has really conquered the world. Christianity is the masterpiece of Judaism...
True Christianity, which will last forever, comes from the gospel words of Christ not from the epistles of Paul. The writings of Paul have been a danger and a hidden rock, the causes of the principal defects of Christian theology.
Morality has been conceived up to the present in a very narrow spirit, as obedience to a law, as inner struggle between opposite laws. As for me, I declare that when I do good I obey no one, I fight no battle and win no victory. The cultivated person has only to follow the delicious incline of his or her inner impulses. Be beautiful and then do at each moment whatever your heart may inspire you to do. This is the whole of morality.
Getting its history wrong is part of being a nation.
The prayer of the agnostic: "O God, if there is a God, save my soul if I have a soul."
Forgetfulness, and I would even say historical error, are essential in the creation of a nation.
To be able to think freely, a man must be certain that no consequence will follow whatever he writes.
Communism is in conflict with human nature.
No idea can succeed except at the expense of sacrifice; no one ever escapes without enduring strain from the struggle of life.
Never has any one been less a priest than Jesus, never a greater enemy of forms, which stifle religion under the pretext of protecting it. By this we are all his disciples and his successors; by this he has laid the eternal foundation-stone of true religion; and if religion is essential to humanity, he has by this deserved the Divine rank the world has accorded him.
I can die when I wish to: that is my elixir of life.