Top 100 Quotes About Diderot

#1. If you disturb the colors of the rainbow, the rainbow is no longer beautiful.

Denis Diderot

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#2. Although a man may wear fine clothing, if he lives peacefully; and is good, self-possessed, has faith and is pure; and if he does not hurt any living being, he is a holy man.

Denis Diderot

Quotes About Diderot #16755
#3. Life is but a series of misunderstandings.

Denis Diderot

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#4. No matter how much a man may study, reflect and meditate on all the books in the world, he is nothing more than a minor scribe unless he has read the great book.

Denis Diderot

Quotes About Diderot #36639
#5. One may demand of me that I should seek truth, but not that I should find it

Denis Diderot

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#6. 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

Quotes About Diderot #54272
#7. A thing is not proved just because no one has ever questioned it. What has never been gone into impartially has never been properly gone into. Hence scepticism is the first step toward truth. It must be applied generally, because it is the touchstone.

Denis Diderot

Quotes About Diderot #62957
#8. In order to get as much fame as one's father one has to much more able than he.

Denis Diderot

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

Denis Diderot

Quotes About Diderot #65896
#10. Posterity for the philosopher is what the other world is for the religious man.

Denis Diderot

Quotes About Diderot #78212
#11. 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

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#12. 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

Quotes About Diderot #94321
#13. People stop thinking when they cease to read.

Denis Diderot

Quotes About Diderot #133753
#14. All things must be examined, debated, investigated without exception and without regard for anyone's feelings.

Denis Diderot

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#15. For me, my thoughts are my prostitutes.

Denis Diderot

Quotes About Diderot #149258
#16. The man who first pronounced the barbarous word God ought to have been immediately destroyed.

Denis Diderot

Quotes About Diderot #166165
#17. You have to make it happen.

Denis Diderot

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#18. 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

Quotes About Diderot #171638
#19. The best mannered people make the most absurd lovers.

Denis Diderot

Quotes About Diderot #194740
#20. Poetry must have something in it that is barbaric, vast and wild.

Denis Diderot

Quotes About Diderot #205254
#21. There is only one duty; that is to be happy.

Denis Diderot

Quotes About Diderot #207181
#22. There is no kind of harassment that a man may not inflict on a woman with impunity in civilized societies.

Denis Diderot

Quotes About Diderot #212232
#23. What a fine comedy this world would be if one did not play a part in it.

Denis Diderot

Quotes About Diderot #225600
#24. To attempt the destruction of our passions is the height of folly. What a noble aim is that of the zealot who tortures himself like a madman in order to desire nothing, love nothing, feel nothing, and who, if he succeeded, would end up a complete monster!

Denis Diderot

Quotes About Diderot #225868
#25. If reason be a gift of Heaven, and we can say as much of faith, Heaven has certainly made us two gifts not only incompatible, but in direct contradiction to each other. In order to solve the difficulty, we are compelled to say either that faith is a chimera or that reason is useless.

Denis Diderot

Quotes About Diderot #245960
#26. The decisions of law courts should never be printed: in the long run, they form a counter authority to the law.

Denis Diderot

Quotes About Diderot #254100
#27. 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

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#28. 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

Quotes About Diderot #281191
#29. 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

Quotes About Diderot #316395
#30. His hands would plait the priest's guts, if he had no rope, to strangle kings.

Denis Diderot

Quotes About Diderot #324996
#31. There are three principal means of acquiring knowledge ... observation of nature, reflection, and experimentation. Observation collects facts; reflection combines them; experimentation verifies the result of that combination.

Denis Diderot

Quotes About Diderot #341277
#32. One swallows the lie that flatters, but sips the bitter truth drop by drop.

Denis Diderot

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#33. One composition is meagre, though it has many figures; another is rich, though it has few.

Denis Diderot

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#34. 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

Quotes About Diderot #386259
#35. I am often tongue-tied with strangers and have what the philosopher Monsieur Diderot calls l'esprit de l'escalier, staircase wit: only long after a remark is made to me will my imagination supply the thing I should have said in reply.

Debra Dean

Quotes About Diderot #403673
#36. Whatever dressing one gives to mushrooms, to whatever sauces our Apiciuses put them, they are not really good but to be sent back to the dungheap where they are born.

Denis Diderot

Quotes About Diderot #408123
#37. 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

Quotes About Diderot #416153
#38. Il ne faut point donner d'esprit a' ses personnages; mais savoir les placer dans des circonstances qui leur en donnent. You should not give wit to your characters, but know instead how to put them in situations which will make them witty.

Denis Diderot

Quotes About Diderot #433400
#39. We are all instruments endowed with feeling and memory. Our senses are so many strings that are struck by surrounding objects and that also frequently strike themselves.

Denis Diderot

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#40. Fanaticism is just one step away from barbarism.

Denis Diderot

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#41. Our observation of nature must be diligent, our reflection profound, and our experiments exact. We rarely see these three means combined; and for this reason, creative geniuses are not common.

Denis Diderot

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#42. 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

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#43. You risk just as much in being credulous as in being suspicious.

Denis Diderot

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

Denis Diderot

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#45. 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

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#46. 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

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

Denis Diderot

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

Denis Diderot

Quotes About Diderot #576638
#49. A thing is not proved because no one has ever questioned it ... Skepticism is the first step toward truth.

Denis Diderot

Quotes About Diderot #582115
#50. Happiest are the people who give most happiness to others

Denis Diderot

Quotes About Diderot #590776
#51. 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

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#52. Integrity is the evidence of all civil virtues.

Denis Diderot

Quotes About Diderot #605296
#53. 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

Quotes About Diderot #606712
#54. Monsignor ... you are asking whether I promise God chastity, poverty, and obedience. I heard what you said and my answer is no

Denis Diderot

Quotes About Diderot #611185
#55. Superstition is more injurious to God than atheism.

Denis Diderot

Quotes About Diderot #614498
#56. 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

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#57. I am wholly yours - you are everything to me; we will sustain each other in all the ills of life it may please fate to inflict upon us; you will soothe my troubles; I will comfort you in yours.

Denis Diderot

Quotes About Diderot #638945
#58. 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

Quotes About Diderot #651376
#59. 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

Quotes About Diderot #667180
#60. Mind what you do; if you deceive me once I shall never believe you again.

Denis Diderot

Quotes About Diderot #667623
#61. 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

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#62. 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

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

Denis Diderot

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#64. Skepticism is the first step on the road to philosophy.

Denis Diderot

Quotes About Diderot #720714
#65. I discuss with myself questions of politics, love, taste, or philosophy. I let my mind rove wantonly, give it free rein to followany idea, wise or mad that may present itself ... My ideas are my harlots.

Denis Diderot

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

Denis Diderot

Quotes About Diderot #730963
#67. For even the ordinary well-read person, the French Enlightenment is largely restricted to the three big-name philosophes: Diderot, Rousseau, Voltaire.

Michael Dirda

Quotes About Diderot #736245
#68. My ideas are my whores.

Denis Diderot

Quotes About Diderot #741576
#69. 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

Quotes About Diderot #751610
#70. 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

Quotes About Diderot #764295
#71. The enjoyment of freedom which could be exercised without any motivation would be the real hallmark of a maniac.

Denis Diderot

Quotes About Diderot #764783
#72. 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

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#73. 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

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

Denis Diderot

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

Denis Diderot

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#76. How easy it is to tell tales!

Denis Diderot

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

Denis Diderot

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#78. 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

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#79. Only a very bad theologian would confuse the certainty that follows revelation with the truths that are revealed. They are entirely different things.

Denis Diderot

Quotes About Diderot #902280
#80. Do you see this egg? With this you can topple every theological theory, every church or temple in the world.

Denis Diderot

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#81. 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

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

Denis Diderot

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#83. The first step towards philosophy is incredulity.

Denis Diderot

Quotes About Diderot #962343
#84. From fanaticism to barbarism is only one step.

Denis Diderot

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

Denis Diderot

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#86. I feel, I think, I judge; therefore, a part of organized matter like me is capable of feeling, thinking, and judging.

Denis Diderot

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#87. Good music is very close to primitive language.

Denis Diderot

Quotes About Diderot #1025087
#88. 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

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

Denis Diderot

Quotes About Diderot #1039643
#90. 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

Quotes About Diderot #1047657
#91. Isn't it better to have men being ungrateful than to miss a chance to do good?

Denis Diderot

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#92. 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

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#93. 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

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

Denis Diderot

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#95. It has been said that love robs those who have it of their wit, and gives it to those who have none.

Denis Diderot

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

Denis Diderot

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

Denis Diderot

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

Denis Diderot

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#99. Only the bad man is alone.

Denis Diderot

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#100. 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

Quotes About Diderot #1147523

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