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 DIDEROTWe 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.
More Denis Diderot Quotes
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You have to make it happen.
DENIS DIDEROT -
I can be expected to look for truth but not to find it.
DENIS DIDEROT -
It is said that desire is a product of the will, but the converse is in fact true: will is a product of desire.
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 -
How easy it is to tell tales!
DENIS DIDEROT -
There is no true sovereign except the nation; there can be no true legislator except the people.
DENIS DIDEROT -
We are far more liable to catch the vices than the virtues of our associates.
DENIS DIDEROT -
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.
DENIS DIDEROT -
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.
DENIS DIDEROT -
When superstition is allowed to perform the task of old age in dulling the human temperament, we can say goodbye to all excellence in poetry, in painting, and in music.
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 -
Does anyone really know where they’re going to?
DENIS DIDEROT -
He whom we call a gentleman is no longer the man of Nature.
DENIS DIDEROT -
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.
DENIS DIDEROT -
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.
DENIS DIDEROT






