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.
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...
The prayer of the agnostic: "O God, if there is a God, save my soul if I have a soul."
Communism is in conflict with human nature.
The epic disappeared along with the age of personal heroism; there can be no epic with artillery.
Human cruelty took the form of a pact with the deity. A solemn oath was made to kill everything, in which people forbade themselves any display of reason or compassion. A city or a land was devoted to destruction and it was believed an insult to God if one did not observe the abominable oath.
Blessed are the blind, for they know not enough to ask why.
The ignorance of French society gives one a rough sense of the infinite.
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 .
Jesus was the greatest religious genius that ever lived.
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.
All the great things of humanity have been accomplished in the name of absolute principles.