“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.”

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

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.

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

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.

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.

The bad gives rise to the good, the good inspires the better, the better produces the excellent, the excellent is followed by the bizarre

Ignorance is less remote from the truth than prejudice.

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

Integrity is the evidence of all civil virtues.

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

If ever anybody dedicated his whole life to the “enthusiasm for truth and justice” using this phrase in the good sense it was Diderot.

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

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

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.

My ideas are my whores.

There is only one passion, the passion for happiness.