Quotes & Sayings About 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

You live as if you were destined to live forever, no thought of your frailty ever enters your head, of how much time has already gone by you take no heed. You squander time as if you drew from a full and abundant supply, so all the while that day which you bestow on some person or thing is perhaps your last. You have all the fears of mortals and all the desires of immortals ... What foolish forgetfulness of mortality to defer wise resolutions to the fiftieth or sixtieth year, and to intend to begin life at a point to which few have attained. — Denis Diderot

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

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. — 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

One declaims endlessly against the passions; one imputes all of man's suffering to them. One forgets that they are also the source of all his pleasures. — Denis Diderot

Does anyone really know where they're going to? — Denis Diderot

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

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. — Denis Diderot

The following general definition of an animal: a system of different organic molecules that have combined with one another, under the impulsion of a sensation similar to an obtuse and muffled sense of touch given to them by the creator of matter as a whole, until each one of them has found the most suitable position for its shape and comfort. — Denis Diderot

Those who fear the facts will forever try to discredit the fact-finders. — Denis Diderot

I give my mind the liberty to follow the first wise or foolish idea that presents itself, just as in the avenue de Foy our dissolute youths follow close on the heels of some strumpet, then leave her to pursue another, attacking all of them and attaching themselves to none. My thoughts are my strumpets. — Denis Diderot

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

Indeed, the purpose of an encyclopedia is to collect knowledge disseminated around the globe; to set forth its general system to the men with whom we live, and transmit it to those who will come after us, so that the work of preceding centuries will not become useless to the centuries to come; and so that our offspring, becoming better instructed, will at the same time become more virtuous and happy, and that we should not die without having rendered a service to the human race in the future years to come. — Denis Diderot

Ignorance is less remote from the truth than prejudice. — Denis Diderot

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

Anyone who takes it upon himself, on his private authority, to break a bad law, thereby authorizes everyone else to break the good ones. — Denis Diderot

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

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

Your favourite virtue ... Simplicity
Your favourite virtue in man ... Strength
Your favourite virtue in woman ... Weakness
Your chief characteristic ... Singleness of purpose
Your idea of happiness ... To fight
Your idea of misery ... Submission
The vice you excuse most ... Gullibility
The vice you detest most ... Servility
Your aversion ... Martin Tupper
Favourite occupation ... Book-worming
Favourite poet ... Shakespeare, Aeschylus, Goethe
Favourite prose-writer ... Diderot
Favourite hero ... Spartacus, Kepler
Favourite heroine ... Gretchen [Heroine of Goethe's Faust]
Favourite flower ... Daphne
Favourite colour ... Red
Favourite name ... Laura, Jenny
Favourite dish ... Fish
Favourite maxim ... Nihil humani a me alienum puto [Nothing human is alien to me]
Favourite motto ... De omnibus dubitandum [Everything must be doubted]. — Karl Marx

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

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. — Denis Diderot

I am more affected by the attractions of virtue than by the deformities of vice; I turn gently away from the wicked and I fly to meet the good. If there is in a literary work, in a character, in a picture, in a statue, a beautiful spot, that is where my eyes rest; I see only that, I remember only that, all the rest is well-nigh forgotten. What becomes of me when the whole work is beautiful! — 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

Our truest opinions are not those we never change, but those to which we most often return. — Denis Diderot

Passions destroy more prejudices than philosophy does. — 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

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

One composition is meagre, though it has many figures; another is rich, though it has few. — Denis Diderot

If you disturb the colors of the rainbow, the rainbow is no longer beautiful. — Denis Diderot

Evil always turns up in this world through some genius or other. — Denis Diderot

The decisions of law courts should never be printed: in the long run, they form a counter authority to the law. — Denis Diderot

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

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

There are two public prosecutors, and one of them is at your door, punishing crimes against society; the other is nature herself. She is familiar with all those vices that escape the law. — Denis Diderot

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

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

Good music is very close to primitive language. — Denis Diderot

It seems to me that if one had kept silence up to now regarding religion, people would still be submerged in the most grotesque and dangerous superstition ... regarding government, we would still be groaning under the bonds of feudal government ... regarding morals, we would still be having to learn what is virtue and what is vice. To forbid all these discussions, the only ones worthy of occupying a good mind, is to perpetuate the reign of ignorance and barbarism. — Denis Diderot

Skepticism is the first step on the road to philosophy. — Denis Diderot

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

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

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

It is not human nature we should accuse but the despicable conventions that pervert it. — Denis Diderot

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

Patriotism is an ephemeral motive that scarcely ever outlasts the particular threat to society that aroused it. — Denis Diderot

As individuals, great writers from Villon to Diderot to Voltaire to
Rousseau to Byron or Shelley have often shown themselves to be
irresponsible, selfish, mean or sometimes even cowardly people. Their lives were drab or self destructive or reckless.
We read them for their Words, not for their deeds. — Max Vegaritter

Mind what you do; if you deceive me once I shall never believe you again. — Denis Diderot

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

Posterity for the philosopher is what the other world is for the religious man. — Denis Diderot

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

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

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

You have to make it happen. — Denis Diderot

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

People stop thinking when they cease to read. — Denis Diderot

A thing is not proved because no one has ever questioned it ... Skepticism is the first step toward truth. — Denis Diderot

The world is the house of the strong. — Denis Diderot

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. — Denis Diderot

No man has received from nature the right to command his fellow human beings. — 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

Poetry must have something in it that is barbaric, vast and wild. — Denis Diderot

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. — Denis Diderot

There is no moral precept that does not have something inconvenient about it. — Denis Diderot

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! — 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

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

Philosophy is as far separated from impiety as religion is from fanaticism. — Denis Diderot

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

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. — 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

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

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

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

All abstract sciences are nothing but the study of relations between signs. — Denis Diderot

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

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

Justice is the first virtue of those who command, and stops the complaints of those who obey. — Denis Diderot

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

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

Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest. — Denis Diderot

There is no kind of harassment that a man may not inflict on a woman with impunity in civilized societies. — Denis Diderot

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

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

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

If to be great means to be good, then Denis Diderot was a little man. But if to be great means to do great things in the teeth of great obstacles, then none can refuse him a place in the temple of the Immortals. — Evelyn Beatrice Hall

Nothing is duller than a progression of common chords. One wants some contrast, which breaks up the clear white light and makes it iridescent. — Denis Diderot

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

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

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

If there were a reason for preferring the Christian religion to natural religion, it would be because the former offers us, on the nature of God and man, enlightenment that the latter lacks. Now, this is not at all the case; for Christianity, instead of clarifying, gives rise to an infinite multitude of obscurities and difficulties. — Denis Diderot

For me, my thoughts are my prostitutes. — Denis Diderot

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

We are far more liable to catch the vices than the virtues of our associates. — 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