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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
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I still understand a few words in life, but I no longer think they make a sentence.
Jean Rostand
The least one can say of power is that a vocation for it is suspicious.
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
The divine is perhaps that quality in man which permits him to endure the lack of God.
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
There are moments when very little truth would be enough to shape opinion. One might be hated at extremely low cost.
Jean Rostand
In order to remain true to oneself one ought to renounce one's party three times a day.
Jean Rostand
Beauty in art is often nothing but ugliness subdued.
Jean Rostand
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.
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
Far too often the choices reality proposes are such as to take away one's taste for choosing.
Jean Rostand
To reflect is to disturb one's thoughts.
Jean Rostand
Greatness, in order to gain recognition, must all too often consent to ape greatness.
Jean Rostand
We spend our time envying people whom we wouldn't wish to be.
Jean Rostand
I prefer the honest jargon of reality to the outright lies of books.
Jean Rostand
Theories pass. The frog remains.
Jean Rostand
Science has made us gods even before we are worthy of being men.
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.
Jean Rostand
The ideal, without doubt, varies, but its enemies, alas, are always the same.
Jean Rostand
Never feel remorse for what you have thought about your wife; she has thought much worse things about you.
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
One kills a man, one is an assassin; one kills millions, one is a conqueror; one kills everybody, one is a god.
Jean Rostand
Think? Why think! We have computers to do that for us.
Jean Rostand
Already at the origin of the species man was equal to what he was destined to become.
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
It may offend us to hear our own thoughts expressed by others: we are not sure enough of their souls.
Jean Rostand
We must watch over our modesty in the presence of those who cannot understand its grounds.
Jean Rostand
I should have no use for a paradise in which I should be deprived of the right to prefer hell.
Jean Rostand
To love an idea is to love it a little more than one should.
Jean Rostand
There are certain moments when we might wish the future were built by men of the past.
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
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
Take heed of critics even when they are not fair; resist them even when they are.
Jean Rostand
One must either take an interest in the human situation or else parade before the void.
Jean Rostand
The nobility of a human being is strictly independent of that of his convictions.
Jean Rostand
It is sometimes well for a blatant error to draw attention to overmodest truths.
Jean Rostand
Nothing leads the scientist so astray as a premature truth.
Jean Rostand
Truth is always served by great minds, even if they fight it.
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
It is sometimes important for science to know how to forget the things she is surest of.
Jean Rostand
A married couple are well suited when both partners usually feel the need for a quarrel at the same time.
Jean Rostand
Certain brief sentences are peerless in their ability to give one the feeling that nothing remains to be said.
Jean Rostand
In politics, yesterday's lie is attacked only to flatter today's.
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
To be adult is to be alone.
Jean Rostand
God, that dumping ground of our dreams.
Jean Rostand
One must credit an hypothesis with all that has had to be discovered in order to demolish it.
Jean Rostand
I think I am one of those who can manage not to take on a completely different appearance under their own glance.
Jean Rostand