Diderot Quotes
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Diderot Quotes & Sayings
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The first step towards philosophy is incredulity.
— Denis Diderot
Superstition is more injurious to God than atheism.
— Denis Diderot
The general interest of the masses might take the place of the insight of genius if it were allowed freedom of action.
— Denis Diderot
First move me, astonish me, break my heart, let me tremble, weep, stare, be enraged-only then regale my eyes.
— Denis Diderot
Evil always turns up in this world through some genius or other.
— Denis Diderot
Every man has his dignity. I'm willing to forget mine, but at my own discretion and not when someone else tells me to.
— Denis Diderot
People stop thinking when they cease to read.
— Denis Diderot
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.
— Denis Diderot
In general, children, like men, and men, like children, prefer entertainment to education.
— Denis Diderot
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.
— Denis Diderot
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.
— Denis Diderot
He whom we call a gentleman is no longer the man of Nature.
— Denis Diderot
In order to shake a hypothesis, it is sometimes not necessary to do anything more than push it as far as it will go.
— Denis Diderot
The world is the house of the strong.
— Denis Diderot
Happiest are the people who give most happiness to others
— Denis Diderot
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.
— Denis Diderot
Monsignor ... you are asking whether I promise God chastity, poverty, and obedience. I heard what you said and my answer is no
— Denis Diderot
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.
— Denis Diderot
Does anyone really know where they're going to?
— Denis Diderot
Diderot took the ground that, if orthodox religion be true Christ was guilty of suicide. Having the power to defend himself he should have used it.
— Robert Green Ingersoll
Jacques said that his master said that everything good or evil we encounter here below was written on high.
— Denis Diderot
There is no kind of harassment that a man may not inflict on a woman with impunity in civilized societies.
— Denis Diderot
First of all move me, surprise me, rend my heart; make me tremble, weep, shudder; outrage me; delight my eyes afterwards if you can.
— Denis Diderot
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.
— Denis Diderot
Give, but, if possible, spare the poor man the shame of begging.
— Denis Diderot
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.
— Denis Diderot
Justice is the first virtue of those who command, and stops the complaints of those who obey.
— Denis Diderot
There is only one passion, the passion for happiness.
— Denis Diderot
There are things I can't force. I must adjust. There are times when the greatest change needed is a change of my viewpoint.
— Denis Diderot
If ever anybody dedicated his whole life to the "enthusiasm for truth and justice" using this phrase in the good sense it was Diderot.
— Denis Diderot
I can be expected to look for truth but not to find it.
— Denis Diderot
Scepticism is the first step towards truth.
— Denis Diderot
If a misplaced admiration shows imbecility, an affected criticism shows vice of character. Expose thyself rather to appear a beast than false.
— Denis Diderot
La poe sie veutquelque chose d'e norme, debarbare et de sauvage. Poetry needs something on the scale of the grand, the barbarous, the savage.
— Denis Diderot
Ignorance is less remote from the truth than prejudice.
— Denis Diderot
From fanaticism to barbarism is only one step.
— Denis Diderot
Life is but a series of misunderstandings.
— Denis Diderot
Passions destroy more prejudices than philosophy does.
— Denis Diderot
Our truest opinions are not those we never change, but those to which we most often return.
— Denis Diderot
All children are essentially criminal.
— Denis Diderot
You risk just as much in being credulous as in being suspicious.
— Denis Diderot
There's a bit of testicle at the bottom of our most sublime feelings and our purest tenderness.
— Denis Diderot
Which is the greater merit, to enlighten the human race, which remains forever, or to save one's fatherland, which is perishable?
— Denis Diderot
Distance is a great promoter of admiration
— Denis Diderot
It is said that desire is a product of the will, but the converse is in fact true: will is a product of desire.
— Denis Diderot
The best mannered people make the most absurd lovers.
— Denis Diderot
Time, matter, space - all, it may be, are no more than a point.
— Denis Diderot
The bad gives rise to the good, the good inspires the better, the better produces the excellent, the excellent is followed by the bizarre
— Denis Diderot
Integrity is the evidence of all civil virtues.
— Denis Diderot
I have only a small flickering light to guide me in the darkness of a thick forest. Up comes a theologian and blows it out.
— Denis Diderot
Morals are in all countries the result of legislation and government; they are not African or Asian or European: they are good or bad.
— Denis Diderot
Patriotism is an ephemeral motive that scarcely ever outlasts the particular threat to society that aroused it.
— Denis Diderot
One composition is meagre, though it has many figures; another is rich, though it has few.
— Denis Diderot
My ideas are my whores.
— Denis Diderot
There is only one virtue, justice; only one duty, to be happy; only one corollary, not to overvalue life and not to fear death.
— Denis Diderot
Do you see this egg? With this you can topple every theological theory, every church or temple in the world.
— Denis Diderot
Oh! how near are genius and madness! Men imprison them and chain them, or raise statues to them.
— Denis Diderot
There is no true sovereign except the nation; there can be no true legislator except the people.
— Denis Diderot
The enjoyment of freedom which could be exercised without any motivation would be the real hallmark of a maniac.
— Denis Diderot
There is less harm to be suffered in being mad among madmen than in being sane all by oneself.
— Denis Diderot
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.
— Denis Diderot
Two qualities essential for the artist: moralityand perspective.
— Denis Diderot
The man who first pronounced the barbarous word God ought to have been immediately destroyed.
— Denis Diderot
You can be sure that a painter reveals himself in his work as much as and more than a writer does in his.
— Denis Diderot
Watch out for the fellow who talks about putting things in order! Putting things in order always means getting other people under your control.
— Denis Diderot
We swallow greedily any lie that flatters us, but we sip only little by little at a truth we find bitter.
— Denis Diderot
It is very important not to mistake hemlock for parsley; but not at all so to believe or not in God.
— Denis Diderot
I have not the hope of being immortal, because the desire of it has not given me that vanity.
— Denis Diderot
Gaiety is a quality of ordinary men. Genius always presupposes some disorder in the machine.
— Denis Diderot
Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.
— Denis Diderot
If you want me to believe in God, you must make me touch him.
— Denis Diderot
For me, my thoughts are my prostitutes.
— Denis Diderot
Bad company is as instructive as licentiousness. One makes up for the loss of one's innocence with the loss of one's prejudices.
— Denis Diderot
What has not been examined impartially has not been well examined. Skepticism is therefore the first step towards truth.
— Denis Diderot
There is only one duty; that is to be happy.
— Denis Diderot
The infant runs toward it with its eyes closed, the adult is stationary, the old man approaches it with his back turned.
— Denis Diderot
Shakespeare's fault is not the greatest into which a poet may fall. It merely indicates a deficiency of taste.
— Denis Diderot
There are cats and cats.
— Denis Diderot