A biography for Jean Rostandhasn’t been written yet.
“I think I am one of those who can manage not to take on a completely different appearance under their own glance.”
“One must either take an interest in the human situation or else parade before the void.”
“I should have no use for a paradise in which I should be deprived of the right to prefer hell.”
“The books one has written in the past have two surprises in store: one couldn't write them again, and wouldn't want to.”
“Somebody told me I should put a pebble in my mouth to cure my stuttering. Well, I tried it, and during a scene I swallowed the pebble. That was the end of that.”
“The least one can say of power is that a vocation for it is suspicious.”
“There are moments when very little truth would be enough to shape opinion. One might be hated at extremely low cost.”
“I don't judge a regime by the damning criticism of the opposition, but by the ingenuous praise of the partisan.”
“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.”
“Far too often the choices reality proposes are such as to take away one's taste for choosing.”
“I still understand a few words in life, but I no longer think they make a sentence.”
“Greatness, in order to gain recognition, must all too often consent to ape greatness.”
“It is sometimes important for science to know how to forget the things she is surest of.”
“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.”
“In politics, yesterday's lie is attacked only to flatter today's.”
“My pessimism extends to the point of even suspecting the sincerity of other pessimists.”
“One kills a man, one is an assassin; one kills millions, one is a conqueror; one kills everybody, one is a god.”
“To be adult is to be alone.”
“It takes a very deep-rooted opinion to survive unexpressed.”
“There are certain moments when we might wish the future were built by men of the past.”