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There are two great currents in the history of humanity: baseness, which makes conservatives; and envy, which makes revolutionaries.

— Goncourt brothers

Il n'y a que deux grands courants dans l'histoire de l'humanité: la bassesse qui fait les conservateurs et l'envie qui fait les révolutionnaires.

Original text (French)

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More quotes by Goncourt brothers

If there is a God, atheism must strike Him as less of an insult than religion.

The art of pleasing consists in never speaking of oneself and always talking to others of themselves. Every one is aware of this, yet how often is it forgotten.

In the language of the bourgeoisie, the grandeur of the words is in direct proportion to the pettiness of the sentiments.

A book is never a masterpiece: it becomes one. Genius is the talent of a dead man.

Critics must have been created on the seventh day. Because if God had created them on the first day, what on earth would they have done?

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A generation which ignores history has no past —and no future.

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History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.

James Joyce Ulysses (1922)

If we don’t care about our past we can’t have very much hope for our future.

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I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past, — so good night!

Thomas Jefferson

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Goncourt brothers (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.