He was a French historian, intellectual, critic, and politician. His central interest focused on the meaning of history and the role that religion played in the unfolding of events. He made a significant contribution to the developing tradition of liberalism in France.
His first major work was a translation of Herder’s monumental philosophy of history, “Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit” (Outlines of a Philosophy of the History of Man).
(1803 – 1875)
– Edgar Quinet Quotes –
Philosophy may be dodged, eloquence cannot.
~ Edgar Quinet
Universal orthodoxy is enriched by every new discovery of truth: what at first appeared universal, by wishing to stand still, sooner or later becomes a sect.
~ Edgar Quinet
It is certain that if you would have the whole secret of a people, you must enter into the intimacy of their religion.
~ Edgar Quinet
I mistrust the satisfaction which makes a display of the possession of Infinity; that is called fatuity in philosophic terms
~ Edgar Quinet
The law of humanity ought to be composed of the past, the present, and the future, that we bear within us; whoever possesses but one of these terms, has but a fragment of the law of the moral world.
~ Edgar Quinet
An effeminate education weakens both the mind and the body.
~ Edgar Quinet
What we share with another ceases to be our own.
~ Edgar Quinet
Science is Christian, not when it condemns itself to the letter of things, but when, in the infinitely little, it discovers as many mysteries and as much depth and power as in the infinitely great.
~ Edgar Quinet
Time is the fairest and toughest judge.
~ Edgar Quinet
The perfection of art is to conceal art.
~ Edgar Quinet
What are all political and social institutions, but always a religion, which in realizing itself, becomes incarnate in the world?
~ Edgar Quinet
