Top 191 Quotes & Sayings by Denis Diderot - Page 2

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

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

Does anyone really know where they're going to?

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

All things must be examined, debated, investigated without exception and without regard for anyone's feelings... We must run roughshod over all these ancient puerilities, overturn the barriers that reason never erected, give back to the arts and sciences the liberty that is so precious to them.

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

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

If exclusive privileges were not granted, and if the financial system would not tend to concentrate wealth, there would be few great fortunes and no quick wealth. When the means of growing rich is divided between a greater number of citizens, wealth will also be more evenly distributed; extreme poverty and extreme wealth would be also rare.

I can be expected to look for truth but not to find it.

I picture the vast realm of the sciences as an immense landscape scattered with patches of dark and light. The goal towards which we must work is either to extend the boundaries of the patches of light, or to increase their number. One of these tasks falls to the creative genius; the other requires a sort of sagacity combined with perfectionism.

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

There is only one virtue, justice; only one duty, to be happy; only one corollary, not to overvalue life and not to fear death.

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.

What is this world? A complex whole, subject to endless revolutions. All these revolutions show a continual tendency to destruction; a swift succession of beings who follow one another, press forward, and vanish; a fleeting symmetry; the order of a moment. I reproached you just now with estimating the perfection of things by your own capacity; and I might accuse you here of measuring its duration by the length of your own days.

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.

As long as the centuries continue to unfold, the number of books will grow continually, and one can predict that a time will come when it will be almost as difficult to learn anything from books as from the direct study of the whole universe. It will be almost as convenient to search for some bit of truth concealed in nature as it will be to find it hidden away in an immense multitude of bound volumes.

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

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.

To be born in imbecility, in the midst of pain and crisis; to be the plaything of ignorance, error, need, sickness, wickedness, and passions; to return step by step to imbecility, from the time of lisping to that of doting; to live among knaves and charlatans of all kinds; to die between one man who takes your pulse and another who troubles your head; never to know where you come from, why you come and where you are going! That is what is called the most important gift of our parents and nature. Life.

And his hands would plait the priest's entrails, For want of a rope, to strangle kings.

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

No man has received from nature the right to give orders to others. Freedom is a gift from heaven, and every individual of the same species has the right to enjoy it as soon as he is in enjoyment of his reason.

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

When we know to read our own hearts, we acquire wisdom of the heartsof others.

What a hell of an economic system! Some are replete with everything while others, whose stomachs are no less demanding, whose hunger is just as recurrent, have nothing to bite on. The worst of it is the constrained posture need puts you in. The needy man does not walk like the rest; he skips, slithers, twists, crawls.

We swallow with one gulp the lie that flatters us, and drink drop by drop the truth which is bitter to us.

My ideas are my whores.

To describe women, the pen should be dipped in the humid colors of the rainbow, and the paper dried with the dust gathered from the wings of a butterfly.

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

The most dangerous madmen are those created by religion, and people whose aim is to disrupt society always know how to make good use of them on occasion.

Only the bad man is alone.

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 any country where talent and virtue produce no advancement, money will be the national god. Its inhabitants will either have to possess money or make others believe that they do. Wealth will be the highest virtue, poverty the greatest vice.

It is not the man who is beside himself, but he who is cool and collected,--who is master of his countenance, of his voice, of his actions, of his gestures, of every part of his play,--who can work upon others at his pleasure.

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

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.

But if you will recall the history of our civil troubles, you will see half the nation bathe itself, out of piety, in the blood of the other half, and violate the fundamental feelings of humanity in order to sustain the cause of God: as though it were necessary to cease to be a man in order to prove oneself religious!

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

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

Une danse est un poe' me. A dance is a poem.

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

Only passions, great passions, can elevate the soul to great things.

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

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

The philosopher forms his principles on an infinity of particular observations. He does not confuse truth with plausibility, he takes for truth what is true, for false what is false, for doubtful what is doubtful, and probable what is probable. The philosophical spirit is thus a spirit of observation and accuracy.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

Ignorance is less remote from the truth than prejudice.

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.

Distance is a great promoter of admiration.

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

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.

All children are essentially criminal.

One must be oneself very little of a philosopher not to feel that the finest privilege of our reason consists in not believing in anything by the impulsion of a blind and mechanical instinct, and that it is to dishonour reason to put it in bonds as the Chaldeans did. Man is born to think for himself.

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

Oh! how near are genius and madness! Men imprison them and chain them, or raise statues to them.