Anatole France Quotes

In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread.

Until one has loved an animal a part of one's soul remains unawakened.

Stupidity is far more dangerous than evil, for evil takes a break from time to time, stupidity does not.

To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream; not only plan, but also believe.

If the path be beautiful, let us not ask where it leads.

If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.

Man is a rational animal. He can think up a reason for anything he wants to believe.

It is better to understand little than to misunderstand a lot.

Do not try to satisfy your vanity by teaching a great many things. Awaken people's curiosity. It is enough to open minds; do not overload them. Put there just a spark. If there is some good inflammable stuff, it will catch fire.

All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another.

A people living under the perpetual menace of war and invasion is very easy to govern. It demands no social reform. It does not haggle over expenditures for armaments and military equipment. It pays without discussion, it ruins itself, and that is an excellent thing for the syndicates of financiers and manufacturers for whom patriotic terrors are an abundant source of gain.

Chance is perhaps the pseudonym of God when he did not want to sign.

You learn to speak by speaking, to study by studying, to run by running, to work by working; in just the same way, you learn to love by loving.

The more you say, the less they remember.

The truth is that life is delicious, horrible, charming, frightful, sweet, bitter, and that is everything.

That man is prudent who neither hopes nor fears anything from the uncertain events of the future.

We have never heard the devil's side of the story, God wrote all the book.

Sometimes one day in a difference place gives you more than ten years of a life at home.

An education isn't how much you have committed to memory, or even how much you know. It's being able to differentiate between what you know and what you don't.

We chase dreams and embrace shadows.

Change is the essence of life.

You think you are dying for your country; you die for the industrialists.

The average man does not know what to do with this life, yet wants another one which will last forever.

Awaken people's curiosity. It is enough to open minds, do not overload them. Put there just a spark.

The Future is hidden even from those who are forging it.