Denis Diderot quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Denis Diderot

Denis Diderot Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from Denis Diderot on Wise Famous Quotes.

Superstition is more injurious to God than atheism.

His hands would plait the priest's guts, if he had no rope, to strangle kings.

The general interest of the masses might take the place of the insight of genius if it were allowed freedom of action.

My friend, you should blow out your candle in order to find your way more clearly.

First move me, astonish me, break my heart, let me tremble, weep, stare, be enraged-only then regale my eyes.

Pithy sentences are like sharp nails which force truth upon our memory.

Evil always turns up in this world through some genius or other.

All abstract sciences are nothing but the study of relations between signs.

The Christian religion teaches us to imitate a God that is cruel, insidious, jealous, and implacable in his wrath.

Those who fear the facts will forever try to discredit the fact-finders.

Anyone who takes it upon himself, on his private authority, to break a bad law, thereby authorizes everyone else to break the good ones.

Doctors are always working to preserve our health and cooks to destroy it, but the latter are the more often successful.

Poetry must have something in it that is barbaric, vast and wild.

People stop thinking when they cease to read.

A nation which thinks that it is belief in God and not good law which makes people honest does not seem to me very advanced.

In general, children, like men, and men, like children, prefer entertainment to education.

It is raining bombs on the house of the Lord. I go in fear and trembling lest one of these terrible bombers gets into difficulties.

Instinct guides the animal better than the man. In the animal it is pure, in man it is led astray by his reason and intelligence.

In order to get as much fame as one's father one has to much more able than he.

He whom we call a gentleman is no longer the man of Nature.

There is no good father who would want to resemble our Heavenly Father.

In order to shake a hypothesis, it is sometimes not necessary to do anything more than push it as far as it will go.

The world is the house of the strong.

To say that man is a compound of strength and weakness, light and darkness, smallness and greatness, is not to indict him, it is to define him.

Monsignor ... you are asking whether I promise God chastity, poverty, and obedience. I heard what you said and my answer is no

How easy it is to tell tales!

Nothing is duller than a progression of common chords. One wants some contrast, which breaks up the clear white light and makes it iridescent.

People praise virtue, but they hate it, they run away from it. It freezes you to death, and in this world you've got to keep your feet warm.

Does anyone really know where they're going to?

One may demand of me that I should seek truth, but not that I should find it

Posterity for the philosopher is what the other world is for the religious man.

Jacques said that his master said that everything good or evil we encounter here below was written on high.

There is no kind of harassment that a man may not inflict on a woman with impunity in civilized societies.

First of all move me, surprise me, rend my heart; make me tremble, weep, shudder; outrage me; delight my eyes afterwards if you can.

All things must be examined, debated, investigated without exception and without regard for anyone's feelings.

The best order of things, as I see it, is the one that includes me; to hell with the most perfect of worlds, if I'm not part of it.

Give, but, if possible, spare the poor man the shame of begging.

You have to make it happen.

If there are one hundred thousand damned souls for one saved soul, the devil has always the advantage without having given up his son to death.

Justice is the first virtue of those who command, and stops the complaints of those who obey.

We are far more liable to catch the vices than the virtues of our associates.

Fanaticism is just one step away from barbarism.

There is only one passion, the passion for happiness.

To prove the Gospels by a miracle is to prove an absurdity by something contrary to nature.

Whether God exists or does not exist, He has come to rank among the most sublime and useless truths.

It is not human nature we should accuse but the despicable conventions that pervert it.

A thing is not proved because no one has ever questioned it ... Skepticism is the first step toward truth.

The bad gives rise to the good, the good inspires the better, the better produces the excellent, the excellent is followed by the bizarre

Good music is very close to primitive language.

There is no moral precept that does not have something inconvenient about it.

If a misplaced admiration shows imbecility, an affected criticism shows vice of character. Expose thyself rather to appear a beast than false.

Do you see this egg? With this you can topple every theological theory, every church or temple in the world.

Life is but a series of misunderstandings.

Our truest opinions are not those we never change, but those to which we most often return.

All children are essentially criminal.

Patriotism is an ephemeral motive that scarcely ever outlasts the particular threat to society that aroused it.

What is a monster? A being whose survival is incompatible with the existing order.

Morals are in all countries the result of legislation and government; they are not African or Asian or European: they are good or bad.

The blood of Jesus Christ can cover a multitude of sins, it seems to me.

The pit of a theatre is the one place where the tears of virtuous and wicked men alike are mingled.

There is no true sovereign except the nation; there can be no true legislator except the people.

Mind what you do; if you deceive me once I shall never believe you again.

The enjoyment of freedom which could be exercised without any motivation would be the real hallmark of a maniac.

At an early age I sucked up the milk of Homer, Virgil, Horace, Terence, Anacreon, Plato and Euripides, diluted with that of Moses and the prophets.

There is less harm to be suffered in being mad among madmen than in being sane all by oneself.

Gratitude is a burden, and every burden is made to be shaken off.

The best doctor is the one you run to and can't find.

What a fine comedy this world would be if one did not play a part in it.

Power acquired by violence is only a usurpation, and lasts only as long as the force of him who commands prevails over that of those who obey.

The God of the Christians is a father who makes much of his apples, and very little of his children.

If ever anybody dedicated his whole life to the "enthusiasm for truth and justice" using this phrase in the good sense it was Diderot.

There is only one duty; that is to be happy.

Gaiety is a quality of ordinary men. Genius always presupposes some disorder in the machine.

Isn't it better to have men being ungrateful than to miss a chance to do good?

I have not the hope of being immortal, because the desire of it has not given me that vanity.

It is very important not to mistake hemlock for parsley; but not at all so to believe or not in God.

Watch out for the fellow who talks about putting things in order! Putting things in order always means getting other people under your control.

You can be sure that a painter reveals himself in his work as much as and more than a writer does in his.

Two qualities essential for the artist: moralityand perspective.

The man who first pronounced the barbarous word God ought to have been immediately destroyed.

If you want me to believe in God, you must make me touch him.

For me, my thoughts are my prostitutes.

What has not been examined impartially has not been well examined. Skepticism is therefore the first step towards truth.

Scepticism is the first step towards truth.

There are things I can't force. I must adjust. There are times when the greatest change needed is a change of my viewpoint.

Philosophy is as far separated from impiety as religion is from fanaticism.

Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.

The infant runs toward it with its eyes closed, the adult is stationary, the old man approaches it with his back turned.

Shakespeare's fault is not the greatest into which a poet may fall. It merely indicates a deficiency of taste.

There are cats and cats.

Passions destroy more prejudices than philosophy does.

From fanaticism to barbarism is only one step.

There's a bit of testicle at the bottom of our most sublime feelings and our purest tenderness.

Which is the greater merit, to enlighten the human race, which remains forever, or to save one's fatherland, which is perishable?

Distance is a great promoter of admiration

It is said that desire is a product of the will, but the converse is in fact true: will is a product of desire.

The best mannered people make the most absurd lovers.

Integrity is the evidence of all civil virtues.

No man has received from nature the right to command his fellow human beings.

Time, matter, space - all, it may be, are no more than a point.