Top 100 Denis Diderot Quotes
#2. One may demand of me that I should seek truth, but not that I should find it
Denis Diderot
#3. In order to get as much fame as one's father one has to much more able than he.
Denis Diderot
#4. En ge ne ral, plus un peuple est civilise , poli, moins ses moeurs sont poe tiques; tout s'affaiblit en s'adoucissant. Ingeneral, themore civilized and refinedthepeople, the less poetic are its morals; everything weakens as it mellows.
Denis Diderot
#6. All things must be examined, debated, investigated without exception and without regard for anyone's feelings.
Denis Diderot
#8. 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
#9. What a fine comedy this world would be if one did not play a part in it.
Denis Diderot
#10. The decisions of law courts should never be printed: in the long run, they form a counter authority to the law.
Denis Diderot
#11. 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
#12. 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
#13. One swallows the lie that flatters, but sips the bitter truth drop by drop.
Denis Diderot
#14. One composition is meagre, though it has many figures; another is rich, though it has few.
Denis Diderot
#15. There is not a Musselman[Muslim] alive who would not imagine that he was performing an action pleasing to God and his Holy Prophet by exterminating every Christian on earth, while the Christians are scarcely more tolerant on their side.
Denis Diderot
#16. When science, art, literature, and philosophy are simply the manifestation of personality they are on a level where glorious and dazzling achievements are possible, which can make a man's name live for thousands of years.
Denis Diderot
#17. Fanaticism is just one step away from barbarism.
Denis Diderot
#18. 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.
Denis Diderot
#19. You risk just as much in being credulous as in being suspicious.
Denis Diderot
#20. The arbitrary rule of a just and enlightened prince is always bad. His virtues are the most dangerous and the surest form of seduction: they lull a people imperceptibly into the habit of loving, respecting, and serving his successor, whoever that successor may be, no matter how wicked or stupid.
Denis Diderot
#21. 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
#22. Philosophy is as far separated from impiety as religion is from fanaticism.
Denis Diderot
#23. Integrity is the evidence of all civil virtues.
Denis Diderot
#24. When shall we see poets born? After a time of disasters and great misfortunes, when harrowed nations begin to breathe again. And then, shaken by the terror of such spectacles, imaginations will paint things entirely strange to those who have not witnessed them.
Denis Diderot
#25. Monsignor ... you are asking whether I promise God chastity, poverty, and obedience. I heard what you said and my answer is no
Denis Diderot
#26. Superstition is more injurious to God than atheism.
Denis Diderot
#27. The wisest among us is very lucky never to have met the woman, be she beautiful or ugly, intelligent or stupid, who could drive him crazy enough to be fit to be put into an asylum.
Denis Diderot
#28. When superstition is allowed to perform the task of old age in dulling the human temperament, we can say goodbye to all excellence in poetry, in painting, and in music.
Denis Diderot
#29. The good of the people must be the great purpose of government. By the laws of nature and of reason, the governors are invested with power to that end. And the greatest good of the people is liberty. It is to the state what health is to the individual.
Denis Diderot
#30. Mind what you do; if you deceive me once I shall never believe you again.
Denis Diderot
#31. 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
#32. There is less harm to be suffered in being mad among madmen than in being sane all by oneself.
Denis Diderot
#33. Skepticism is the first step on the road to philosophy.
Denis Diderot
#35. 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
#36. 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
#37. How had they met? By chance, like everybody else. What were there names? What's it to you? Where were they coming from? From the nearest place. Where were they going? Does anyone really know where they're going?
Denis Diderot
#38. The infant runs toward it with its eyes closed, the adult is stationary, the old man approaches it with his back turned.
Denis Diderot
#39. I have not the hope of being immortal, because the desire of it has not given me that vanity.
Denis Diderot
#40. Shakespeare's fault is not the greatest into which a poet may fall. It merely indicates a deficiency of taste.
Denis Diderot
#41. The fact is that she was terribly undressed and I was extremely undressed too. The fact is that I still had my hand where she didn't have anything and she had hers where the same wasn't quite true of me. The fact is that I found myself underneath her and consequently she found herself on top of me.
Denis Diderot
#42. Do you see this egg? With this you can topple every theological theory, every church or temple in the world.
Denis Diderot
#43. The first step towards philosophy is incredulity.
Denis Diderot
#44. From fanaticism to barbarism is only one step.
Denis Diderot
#45. All abstract sciences are nothing but the study of relations between signs.
Denis Diderot
#46. Good music is very close to primitive language.
Denis Diderot
#47. If the weather is too cold or rainy, I take shelter in the Regence Cafe, where I entertain myself by watching chess being played. Paris is the world center, and this cafe is the Paris centre for the finest skill at this game.
Denis Diderot
#48. Man was born to live with his fellow human beings. Separate him, isolate him, his character will go bad, a thousand ridiculous affects will invade his heart, extravagant thoughts will germinate in his brain, like thorns in an uncultivated land.
Denis Diderot
#49. The world is the house of the strong. I shall not know until the end what I have lost or won in this place, in this vast gambling den where I have spent more than sixty years, dice box in hand, shaking the dice.
Denis Diderot
#50. The Christian religion teaches us to imitate a God that is cruel, insidious, jealous, and implacable in his wrath.
Denis Diderot
#51. Time, matter, space - all, it may be, are no more than a point.
Denis Diderot
#52. To prove the Gospels by a miracle is to prove an absurdity by something contrary to nature.
Denis Diderot
#54. 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
#55. The general interest of the masses might take the place of the insight of genius if it were allowed freedom of action.
Denis Diderot
#56. The pit of a theatre is the one place where the tears of virtuous and wicked men alike are mingled.
Denis Diderot
#57. Only passions, and great passions, can raise the soul to great things. Without them there is no sublimity, either in morals or in creativity. Art returns to infancy, and virtue becomes small- minded.
Denis Diderot
#59. 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
#60. 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
#61. We swallow greedily any lie that flatters us, but we sip only little by little at a truth we find bitter.
Denis Diderot
#62. Those authors into whose hands nature has placed a magic wand, with which they no sooner touch us than we forget the unhappiness in life, than the darkness leaves our soul, and we are reconciled to existence, should be placed among the benefactors of the human race.
Denis Diderot
#64. Disturbances in society are never more fearful than when those who are stirring up the trouble can use the pretext of religion to mask their true designs.
Denis Diderot
#65. Oh! how near are genius and madness! Men imprison them and chain them, or raise statues to them.
Denis Diderot
#66. If a misplaced admiration shows imbecility, an affected criticism shows vice of character. Expose thyself rather to appear a beast than false.
Denis Diderot
#67. It is better to reveal a weakness than allow oneself be suspected of a vice.
Denis Diderot
#68. The possibility of divorce renders both marriage partners stricter in their observance of the duties they owe to each other. Divorces help to improve morals and to increase the population.
Denis Diderot
#69. When we know to read our own hearts, we acquire wisdom of the heartsof others.
Denis Diderot
#70. Patriotism is an ephemeral motive that scarcely ever outlasts the particular threat to society that aroused it.
Denis Diderot
#71. There is only one passion, the passion for happiness.
Denis Diderot
#72. We are far more liable to catch the vices than the virtues of our associates.
Denis Diderot
#73. Pithy sentences are like sharp nails which force truth upon our memory.
Denis Diderot
#74. Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.
Denis Diderot
#75. Wandering in a vast forest at night, I have only a faint light to guide me. A stranger appears and says to me: 'My friend, you should blow out your candle in order to find your way more clearly.' This stranger is a theologian.
Denis Diderot
#77. Are we not madder than those first inhabitants of the plain of Sennar? We know that the distance separating the earth from the sky is infinite, and yet we do not stop building our tower.
Denis Diderot
#78. It is very important not to mistake hemlock for parsley; but not at all so to believe or not in God.
Denis Diderot
#79. First move me, astonish me, break my heart, let me tremble, weep, stare, be enraged-only then regale my eyes.
Denis Diderot
#80. One cannot get rid of a good education, nor, unfortunately, of a bad one, which often is such because one has not wanted to defray the expenses of a good one.
Denis Diderot
#81. I can be expected to look for truth but not to find it.
Denis Diderot
#82. In general, children, like men, and men, like children, prefer entertainment to education.
Denis Diderot
#83. There's a bit of testicle at the bottom of our most sublime feelings and our purest tenderness.
Denis Diderot
#84. Whether God exists or does not exist, He has come to rank among the most sublime and useless truths.
Denis Diderot
#86. Our truest opinions are not those we never change, but those to which we most often return.
Denis Diderot
#87. There is no moral precept that does not have something inconvenient about it.
Denis Diderot
#88. There is no true sovereign except the nation; there can be no true legislator except the people.
Denis Diderot
#89. Tous les jours on couche avec des femmes qu'on n'aime pas, et l'on ne couche pas avec des femmes qu'on aime. Every day we sleep with women we do not love and don't sleep with the women we do love.
Denis Diderot
#90. 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
#91. No man has received from nature the right to command his fellow human beings.
Denis Diderot
#92. Ignorance is less remote from the truth than prejudice.
Denis Diderot
#93. What has not been examined impartially has not been well examined. Skepticism is therefore the first step towards truth.
Denis Diderot
#94. There is no good father who would want to resemble our Heavenly Father.
Denis Diderot
#95. The best doctor is the one you run to and can't find.
Denis Diderot
#96. It is not human nature we should accuse but the despicable conventions that pervert it.
Denis Diderot
#97. 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
#98. I like better for one to say some foolish thing upon important matters than to be silent. That becomes the subject of discussion and dispute, and the truth is discovered.
Denis Diderot
#99. Give, but, if possible, spare the poor man the shame of begging.
Denis Diderot
#100. Mankind have banned the Divinity from their presence; they have relegated him to a sanctuary; the walls of the temple restrict his view; he does not exist outside of it.
Denis Diderot
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