Denis Diderot Quotes

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.

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.

The pit of a theatre is the one place where the tears of virtuous and wicked men alike are mingled.

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.

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.

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

Isn't it better to have men being ungrateful than to miss a chance to do good?

The thought of [our] destruction is like a light in the middle of the night that spreads its flames on the objects it will soon consume. We must get used to contemplating this light, since it announces nothing that has not been prepared by all that comes before; and since death is as natural as life, why should be so afraid of it?

You have to make it happen.

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.

Genius is present in every age, but the men carrying it within them remain benumbed unless extraordinary events occur to heat up and melt the mass so that it flows forth.

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?

Happiest are the people who give most happiness to others

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.

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

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.

Integrity is the evidence of all civil virtues.

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

Only God and some few rare geniuses can keep forging ahead into novelty.

Fanaticism is just one step away from barbarism.

How old the world is! I walk between two eternities ... What is my fleeting existence in comparison with that decaying rock, thatvalley digging its channel ever deeper, that forest that is tottering and those great masses above my head about to fall? I see the marble of tombs crumbling into dust; and yet I don't want to die!

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.

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.

Every man has his dignity. I'm willing to forget mine, but at my own discretion and not when someone else tells me to.

We swallow greedily any lie that flatters us, but we sip only little by little at a truth we find bitter.

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

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!

This root [the potato], no matter how much you prepare it, is tasteless and floury. It cannot pass for an agreeable food, but it supplies a food sufficiently abundant and sufficiently healthy for men who ask only to sustain themselves. The potato is criticized with reason for being windy, but what matters windiness for the vigorous organisms of peasants and laborers?

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

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.

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.

Superstition is more injurious to God than atheism.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

It is said that desire is a product of the will, but the converse is in fact true: will is a product of desire.

Two qualities essential for the artist: moralityand perspective.

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.

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.

Passions destroy more prejudices than philosophy does.

His hands would plait the priest's guts, if he had no rope, to strangle kings.

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.

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

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

Scepticism is the first step towards truth.

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

It is better to reveal a weakness than allow oneself be suspected of a vice.

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

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

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.

Does anyone really know where they're going to?

Skepticism is the first step on the road to philosophy.

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

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

The best doctor is the one you run to and can't find.

The best mannered people make the most absurd lovers.

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.

For me, my thoughts are my prostitutes.

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

It is very important not to mistake hemlock for parsley; but not at all so to believe or not in God.

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

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.

From fanaticism to barbarism is only one step.

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

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.

The enjoyment of freedom which could be exercised without any motivation would be the real hallmark of a maniac.

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.

Morals are in all countries the result of legislation and government; they are not African or Asian or European: they are good or bad.

What is a monster? A being whose survival is incompatible with the existing order.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

Only the bad man is alone.

All things must be examined, debated, investigated without exception and without regard for anyone's feelings.

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

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.

Ignorance is less remote from the truth than prejudice.

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.

Which is the greater merit, to enlighten the human race, which remains forever, or to save one's fatherland, which is perishable?

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!

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.

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

There are things I can't force. I must adjust. There are times when the greatest change needed is a change of my viewpoint.

Whether God exists or does not exist, He has come to rank among the most sublime and useless truths.

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.

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.

Pithy sentences are like sharp nails which force truth upon our memory.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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