Denis Diderot Quotes
One composition is meagre, though it has many figures; another is rich, though it has few.
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.
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.
We are constantly railing against the passions; we ascribe to them all of man's afflictions, and we forget that they are also the source of all his pleasures.
The infant runs toward it with its eyes closed, the adult is stationary, the old man approaches it with his back turned.
Does not vanity itself cease to be blamable, is it not even ennobled, when it is directed to laudable objects, when it confines itself to prompting us to great and generous actions?
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.
Do you see this egg? With this you can topple every theological theory, every church or temple in the world.
It has been said that love robs those who have it of their wit, and gives it to those who have none.
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.
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.
Which is the greater merit, to enlighten the human race, which remains forever, or to save one's fatherland, which is perishable?
Whether God exists or does not exist, He has come to rank among the most sublime and useless truths.
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.
Anyone who takes it upon himself, on his private authority, to break a bad law, thereby authorizes everyone else to break the good ones.
When one compares the talents one has with those of a Leibniz , one is tempted to throw away one's books and go die quietly in the dark of some forgotten corner.
Shakespeare's fault is not the greatest into which a poet may fall. It merely indicates a deficiency of taste.
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.
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.
Le public ne sait pas toujours de sirer le vrai. Thepublicdoesnot alwaysknowhow todesirethetruth.
I feel, I think, I judge; therefore, a part of organized matter like me is capable of feeling, thinking, and judging.
The enjoyment of freedom which could be exercised without any motivation would be the real hallmark of a maniac.
Jacques said that his master said that everything good or evil we encounter here below was written on high.
If ever anybody dedicated his whole life to the "enthusiasm for truth and justice" using this phrase in the good sense it was Diderot.
One swallows the lie that flatters, but sips the bitter truth drop by drop.
Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.
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.
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.
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.
Morals are in all countries the result of legislation and government they are not African or Asian or European: they are good or bad.