Anatole France

"The whole art of teaching is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity of young minds."

"To know is nothing at all; to imagine is everything."

"A person is never happy except at the price of some ignorance."

"If we would only give, just once, the same amount of reflection to what we want to get out of life that we give to trivial things, how it would change everything."

"The number of things one must take into account in order to live decently are so many that it is better to give up altogether."

"It is human nature to think wisely and act in an absurd way."

"The little dissatisfactions which men feel are the springs of all progress."

"Justice is the means by which established injustices are sanctioned."

"Existence is not only perilous; it is absurd."

"The good critic is he who relates the adventures of his soul among masterpieces."

"An education obtained by reading books in the library is not education at all."

"Without the spice of hunger, there is no relish for the feast."

"I prefer the folly of enthusiasm to the indifference of wisdom."

"Clever people will recognize and tolerate nothing but cleverness."

"One cannot be deeply responsive to the world without being saddened very often."

"The true test of civilization is not the census, nor the size of cities, but the kind of man the country turns out."

"Every man should relax from his serious and heavy occupations only for the sake of business itself."

"I have no country; the whole world is my world."

"It is forbidden to forbid."

"The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in the insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding."

"Amity is an obligation in the form of truth and faith."

"Tyrannies are not ended by the sword, but by the pen."

"Do not try to satisfy your vanity by teaching a great number of things. Awaken people's curiosity."

"At the bottom of a good deal of the bravery that appears in the world there lurks a miserable cowardice."

"Books are humanity in print."

"We go forward in time, and then must we not think we can rewrite our past."

"The charm of history and its enigmatic lesson consist in the fact that, from age to age, nothing changes and yet everything is completely different."

"I love the good natured gossip of old women."

"All change is not growth, as all movement is not forward."

"Science is the study of those judgments concerning which universal agreement is possible."