“Science has made us gods even before we are worthy of being men.”
Jean Rostand (1894–1977) French writer
La science a fait de nous des dieux avant même que nous méritions d'être des hommes.
[Jean Rostand, Thoughts of a Biologist, 1939]
As quoted in Day's Collacon: An Encyclopaedia of Prose Quotations (1884), edited by Edward Parsons Day, p. 326
Comparable to "Si Dieu n'existait pas, il faudrait l'inventer" (translated: "If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him", Voltaire, Épître à l'Auteur du Livre des Trois Imposteurs (10 November 1770).
“Science has made us gods even before we are worthy of being men.”
Jean Rostand (1894–1977) French writer
La science a fait de nous des dieux avant même que nous méritions d'être des hommes.
[Jean Rostand, Thoughts of a Biologist, 1939]
Fausto Cercignani (1941) Italian scholar, essayist and poet
Examples of self-translation (c. 2004), Quotes - Zitate - Citations - Citazioni
Nicholas Sparks (1965) American writer and novelist
Travis Parker, Proloque, p. 3
2000s, The Choice (2007)
Pierre-Paul Grassé (1895–1985) French zoologist
Grassé, Pierre Paul (1977); Evolution of living organisms: evidence for a new theory of transformation. Academic Press, p. 172
Evolution of living organisms: evidence for a new theory of transformation (1977)
Original: Le philosophe, considérant l'univers dans son intégralité, est conduit à n'admettre qu'un seul être nécessaire, absolu, Dieu. Tous les autres sont contingents; c'est pour cela que Pascal disait de lui-même : « Je sens que je puis n'avoir pas été... donc je ne suis pas un être nécessaire » (Pensées, 597). Cette proposition s'applique avec autant de justesse à tout être
Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer
The trial of Charles B. Reynolds for blasphemy (1887)
Context: I want you to understand what has been done in the world to force men to think alike. It seems to me that if there is some infinite being who wants us to think alike he would have made us alike. Why did he not do so? Why did he make your brain so that you could not by any possibility be a Methodist? Why did he make yours so that you could not be a Catholic? And why did he make the brain of another so that he is an unbeliever — why the brain of another so that he became a Mohammedan — if he wanted us all to believe alike?
After all, maybe Nature is good enough and grand enough and broad enough to give us the diversity born of liberty. Maybe, after all, it would not be best for us all to be just the same. What a stupid world, if everybody said yes to everything that everybody else might say.
The most important thing in this world is liberty. More important than food or clothes — more important than gold or houses or lands — more important than art or science — more important than all religions, is the liberty of man.
Michael Marshall Smith (1965) British novelist, screenwriter and short story writer
Source: The Lonely Dead (2004), Ch. 14
John Norman (1931) philosophy professor, author of Gor novel series
Epictetus (50–138) philosopher from Ancient Greece
That we ought not to be affected by Things not in our own Power, Chap. xxiv.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)