The ideal, without doubt, varies, but its enemies, alas, are always the same.
-- Jean Rostand
We must watch over our modesty in the presence of those who cannot understand its grounds.
-- Jean Rostand
Nothing leads the scientist so astray as a premature truth.
-- Jean Rostand
Falsity cannot keep an idea from being beautiful; there are certain errors of such ingenuity that one could regret their not ranking among the achievements of the human mind.
-- Jean Rostand
I prefer the honest jargon of reality to the outright lies of books.
-- Jean Rostand
It is not easy to imagine how little interested a scientist usually is in the work of any other, with the possible exception of the teacher who backs him or the student who honors him.
-- Jean Rostand
It is sometimes important for science to know how to forget the things it is surest of.
-- Jean Rostand
It takes a very deep-rooted opinion to survive unexpressed.
-- Jean Rostand
When a scientist is ahead of his times, it is often through misunderstanding of current, rather than intuition of future truth. In science there is never any error so gross that it won't one day, from some perspective, appear prophetic.
-- Jean Rostand
To be adult is to be alone.
-- Jean Rostand
Stupidity, outrage, vanity, cruelty, iniquity, bad faith, falsehood - we fail to see the whole array when it is facing in the same direction as we.
-- Jean Rostand
Science has made us gods even before we are worthy of being men.
-- Jean Rostand
A few great minds are enough to endow humanity with monstrous power, but a few great hearts are not enough to make us worthy of using it.
-- Jean Rostand
I don't judge a regime by the damning criticism of the opposition, but by the ingenuous praise of the partisan.
-- Jean Rostand
The least one can say of power is that a vocation for it is suspicious.
-- Jean Rostand
In order to remain true to oneself one ought to renounce one's party three times a day.
-- Jean Rostand
In politics, yesterday's lie is attacked only to flatter today's.
-- Jean Rostand
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.
-- Jean Rostand
We are not naive enough to ask for pure men; we ask merely for men whose impurity does not conflict with the obligations of their job.
-- Jean Rostand
Take heed of critics even when they are not fair; resist them even when they are.
-- Jean Rostand
Certain brief sentences are peerless in their ability to give one the feeling that nothing remains to be said.
-- Jean Rostand
The books one has written in the past have two surprises in store: one couldn't write them again, and wouldn't want to.
-- Jean Rostand
Prerequisite for rereadability in books: that they be forgettable.
-- Jean Rostand
Renown? I've already got more of it than those I respect, and will never have as much as those for whom I feel contempt.
-- Jean Rostand
Greatness, in order to gain recognition, must all too often consent to ape greatness.
-- Jean Rostand
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