Quotes from Jean Rostand

A body of work such as Pasteur's is inconceivable in our time: no man would be given a chance to create a whole science. Nowadays a path is scarcely opened up when the crowd begins to pour in.

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.

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.

Certain brief sentences are peerless in their ability to give one the feeling that nothing remains to be said.

God, that checkroom of our dreams.

My pessimism extends to the point of even suspecting the sincerity of other pessimists.

The ideal, without doubt, varies, but its enemies, alas, are always the same.

The least one can say of power is that a vocation for it is suspicious.

To be an adult is to be alone.

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.

We are not na?ve enough to ask for pure men; we ask merely for men whose impurity does not conflict with the obligations of their job.

Nothing is more admirable than the fortitude with which millionaires tolerate the disadvantages of their wealth.

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.

I should have no use for a paradise in which I should be deprived of the right to prefer hell.

I prefer the honest jargon of reality to the outright lies of books.

Nothing leads the scientist so astray as a premature truth.

We must watch over our modesty in the presence of those who cannot understand its grounds.

Far too often the choices reality proposes are such as to take away one's taste for choosing.

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.

Science has made us gods even before we are worthy of being men.

It is sometimes well for a blatant error to draw attention to overmodest truths.

What scientist would not long to go on living, if only to see how the little truths he has brought to light will grow up?

Think? Why think! We have computers to do that for us.

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.