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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.

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

Greatness Mindset Moral Passion Raise Small Soul
There is no moral precept that does not have something inconvenient about it.
DENIS DIDEROT

Convenience Moral Perception
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

Anand Thakur
In order to get as much fame as one’s father one has to much more able than he.
DENIS DIDEROT

Fame Father Himself Order
The Christian religion teaches us to imitate a God that is cruel, insidious, jealous, and implacable in his wrath.
DENIS DIDEROT

Anand Thakur
Does not vanity itself cease to be blamable, is it not even ennobled, when it is directed to laudable objects, when it confines itself to prompting us to great and generous actions?
DENIS DIDEROT

Action Direction Generous Object
He whom we call a gentleman is no longer the man of Nature.
DENIS DIDEROT

Gentle Himself Man Nature
There’s a bit of testicle at the bottom of our most sublime feelings and our purest tenderness.
DENIS DIDEROT

Anand Thakur
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.
DENIS DIDEROT

Definition Himself Man Strength Weakness
If you disturb the colors of the rainbow, the rainbow is no longer beautiful.
DENIS DIDEROT

Beautiful Color Disturb Rainbow
For me, my thoughts are my prostitutes.
DENIS DIDEROT

Myself Prostitute Thinking
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

Dignity Man Myself Willing
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

Difficult God Home Raining
You risk just as much in being credulous as in being suspicious.
DENIS DIDEROT

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

Impartial Path Step Truth
Patriotism is an ephemeral motive that scarcely ever outlasts the particular threat to society that aroused it.
DENIS DIDEROT

Arouse Patriot Society

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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