Denis diderot quotes

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

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.

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.

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

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

Ignorance is less remote from the truth than prejudice.

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

Only the bad man is alone.

From fanaticism to barbarism is only one step.

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!

There is no good father who would want to resemble our Heavenly Father.

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

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.

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

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

If there is one realm in which it is essential to be sublime, it is in wickedness. You spit on a petty thief, but you can't deny a kind of respect for the great criminal.

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.

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.

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

All children are essentially criminal.

The possibility of divorce renders both marriage partners stricter in their observance of the duties they owe to each other. Divorces help to improve morals and to increase the population.

Scepticism is the first step toward truth.

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.

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

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

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.

The blood of Jesus Christ can cover a multitude of sins, it seems to me.

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

My ideas are my whores.

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

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

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

Does anyone really know where they're going to?

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

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

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.

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

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

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!

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.

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!

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

Two qualities essential for the artist: moralityand perspective.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

Superstition is more injurious to God than atheism.

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.

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

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

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 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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

Skepticism is the first step on the road to philosophy.

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.

Distance is a great promoter of admiration.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Do you see this egg? With this you can topple every theological theory, every church or temple in the world.

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

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

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

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.

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.

The best mannered people make the most absurd lovers.

Fanaticism is just one step away from barbarism.

We are a free people; and now you have planted in our country the title deeds of our future slavery. You are neither god nor demon; who are you, then, to make slaves? Orou! You understand the language of these men, tell us all, as you have told me, what they have written on this sheet of metal: This country is ours. This country yours? And why? Because you have walked thereon? If a Tahitian landed one day on your shores, and scratched on one of your rocks or on the bark of your trees: This country belongs to the people of Tahiti - what would you think?

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

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

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

In order to shake a hypothesis, it is sometimes not necessary to do anything more than push it as far as it will go.

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.

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

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.

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

You have to make it happen.

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.

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.

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

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

There is only one passion, the passion for happiness.

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

Integrity is the evidence of all civil virtues.

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.

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

Watch out for the fellow who talks about putting things in order! Putting things in order always means getting other people under your control.

The philosopher has never killed any priests, whereas the priest has killed a great many philosophers.

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.

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

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

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

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.

In order to get as much fame as one's father one has to much more able than he.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Happiest are the people who give most happiness to others.

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

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

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

How old the world is! I walk between two eternities.... What is my fleeting existence in comparison with that decaying rock, that valley 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!

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

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.

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

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.

The world is the house of the strong.