Ernest Renan Quotes
Man is not on this earth merely to be happy, or even to be simply honest. He is there to realize great things for humanity, to attain nobility and to surmount the vulgarity of almost everybody.
Renan, Ernest. The Apostles. G. W. Carleton, 1866, p. 165.
The Muslims were poised to make the final assault on Constantinople. Religious leaders were whipping up the troops by calling for Jihad and telling them those who fell in battle would enjoy immediate access to Paradise and the virgins that went with Islamic martyrdom. However, the Sultan did not trust religious fervor alone. He said this to the leaders of his soldiers who then spread the word. The City fell the next day. The troops had 3 days of looting, rape and pillage which the Sultan had promised, but there was almost no further damage to the infrastructure other than that caused by the seige cannons.
Joseph Ernest Renan was a French Orientalist and Semitic scholar, expert of Semitic languages and civilizations, historian of religion, philologist, philosopher, biblical scholar and critic. He wrote influential and pioneering historical works on the origins of early Christianity, and espoused popular political theories especially concerning nationalism and national identity. Renan is credited as being among the first scholars to advance the now-discredited Khazar theory, which held that Ashkenazi Jews were descendants of the Khazars, Turkic peoples who had adopted Jewish religion and migrated to Western Europe following the collapse of their khanate.
