"To say of men that they are bad is to say they are worse than we think we are, or worse than the ideal man whose image we have built up on the basis of a certain few."

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More quotes from: Jean Rostand

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• "Beauty in art is often nothing but ugliness subdued. "
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• "Falsity cannot keep an idea from being beautiful; there are certain errors of such ingenuity ..."
• "God, that checkroom of our dreams. "
• "God, that dumping ground of our dreams. "
• "Greatness, in order to gain recognition, must all too often consent to ape greatness. "
• "I don't judge a regime by the damning criticism of the opposition, but by the ..."
• "I prefer the honest jargon of reality to the outright lies of books. "
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• "In politics, yesterday's lie is attacked only to flatter today's. "
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• "It may offend us to hear our own thoughts expressed by others: we are not ..."
• "It takes a very deep-rooted opinion to survive unexpressed. "
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• "Never feel remorse for what you have thought about your wife; she has thought much ..."
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• "Nothing leads the scientist so astray as a premature truth. "
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• "Prerequisite for rereadability in books: that they be forgettable. "
• "Renown? I've already got more of it than those I respect, and will never have ..."
• "Science has made us gods even before we are worthy of being men. "
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• "Take heed of critics even when they are not fair; resist them even when they ..."
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• "The least one can say of power is that a vocation for it is suspicious. "
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• "Think? Why think! We have computers to do that for us. "
• "To be adult is to be alone. "
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