Nothing leads the scientist so astray as a premature truth.

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

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

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

Kill a man, and you are a murderer. Kill millions of men, and you are a conquerer. Kill everyone, and you are a god.

I don’t judge a regime by the damning criticism of the opposition, but by the ingenuous praise of the partisan.

To love an idea is to love it a little more than one should.

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.

There are certain moments when we might wish the future were built by men of the past.

Beauty in art is often nothing but ugliness subdued.

A married couple are well suited when both partners usually feel the need for a quarrel at the same time.

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

It is sometimes important for science to know how to forget the things she is surest of.

I think I am one of those who can manage not to take on a completely different appearance under their own glance.

One kills a man, one is an assassin; one kills millions, one is a conqueror; one kills everybody, one is a god.

Nothing leads the scientist so astray as a premature truth.

We spend our time envying people whom we wouldn’t wish to be.

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

Hatred, for the man who is not engaged in it, is a little like the odor of garlic for one who hasn’t eaten any.

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.

Greatness, in order to gain recognition, must all too often consent to ape greatness.

God, that dumping ground of our dreams.

In order to remain true to oneself one ought to renounce one’s party three times a day.

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

The nobility of a human being is strictly independent of that of his convictions.

To be adult is to be alone.

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.

A man is not old as long as he is seeking something.

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.

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.

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.

I still understand a few words in life, but I no longer think they make a sentence.

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.

Take heed of critics even when they are not fair; resist them even when they are.

The books one has written in the past have two surprises in store: one couldn’t write them again, and wouldn’t want to.

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

One must credit an hypothesis with all that has had to be discovered in order to demolish it.

To reflect is to disturb one’s thoughts.

In politics, yesterday’s lie is attacked only to flatter today’s.

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.

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

Theories pass. The frog remains.

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

One must either take an interest in the human situation or else parade before the void.

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.

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

It may offend us to hear our own thoughts expressed by others: we are not sure enough of their souls.

Truth is always served by great minds, even if they fight it.

Never feel remorse for what you have thought about your wife; she has thought much worse things about you.

The divine is perhaps that quality in man which permits him to endure the lack of God.

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.

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

It takes a very deep-rooted opinion to survive unexpressed.

Already at the origin of the species man was equal to what he was destined to become.