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You’re right. One has to be mad. [...] Do you remember about the prehistoric reptile, the an- cestor of man, the first to emerge from the mud in earl… - Romain Gary
" "You’re right. One has to be mad. [...] Do you remember about the prehistoric reptile, the an- cestor of man, the first to emerge from the mud in early Paleozoic times, a milliard years ago, who set out to live in the air and to breathe, even though he had no lungs? [...] Well, he was mad too. Absolutely bats. That’s why he tried. He’s the ancestor of us all, and we shouldn’t forget it. But for him we wouldn’t be here. He was as crazy as they come. We too have got to try. That's what progress is. By trying like him, perhaps we’ll wind up with the necessary organs, the organ of dignity, of decency, or of fraternity.
humanity
fraternity
evolution-of-humans
evolution-of-man
truth-of-life
decency
dignity
becoming-human
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About Romain Gary
Romain Gary, born Romain Kacew (8 May 1914 - 2 December 1980) was a Jewish-French novelist, film director, WWII pilot and diplomat. He wrote under many pseudonyms including Shatan Bogat, Rene Deville and Fosco Sinibaldi. He is the only author to have won the Prix Goncourt twice, once under his own name and again under the pseudonym Émile Ajar.
Biography information from Wikiquote
Also Known As
Pen Names:
Fosco Sinibaldi
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Shatan Bogat
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Émile Ajar
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Lucien Brulard
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René Deville
Alternative Names:
Emile Ajar
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Roman Kacew
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Additional quotes by Romain Gary
The whole of his life was only one long protest against his lack of importance: that, I’m sure, was what drove him to kill so many magnificent animals — some of the finest and most powerful in creation. One day, I won the confidence of a writer who comes regularly to Africa to kill his ration of elephants, lions and rhino. I had asked him where he got this need and he had had enough to drink to make him sincere: ‘All my life I’ve been half-dead with fear. Fear of living, fear of dying, fear of illness, fear of becoming impotent, fear of the inevitable physical decline. When it becomes intolerable, I come to Africa, and all my dread, all my fear, is concentrated on the charging rhino, on the lion rising slowly in front of me out of the grass, on the elephant that swerves in my direction. Then at last my dread becomes something tangible, something I can kill. I shoot, and for a while I’m delivered, I have complete peace, the animal has taken away with him in his sudden death all my accumulated terrors — for a few hours I’m rid of them. At the end of six weeks it amounts to a real cure.’ I’m sure there was something of that in Orsini — but above all, there was a violent protest against the smallness and impotence of being a man, the smallness and impotence of being Orsini. He had to kill a lot of elephants and lions to compensate for that.
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