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 DIDEROTYou can be sure that a painter reveals himself in his work as much as and more than a writer does in his.
More Denis Diderot Quotes
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First move me, astonish me, break my heart, let me tremble, weep, stare, be enraged-only then regale my eyes.
DENIS DIDEROT -
There’s a bit of testicle at the bottom of our most sublime feelings and our purest tenderness.
DENIS DIDEROT -
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 -
When we know to read our own hearts, we acquire wisdom of the heartsof others.
DENIS DIDEROT -
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.
DENIS DIDEROT -
Which is the greater merit, to enlighten the human race, which remains forever, or to save one’s fatherland, which is perishable?
DENIS DIDEROT -
From fanaticism to barbarism is only one step.
DENIS DIDEROT -
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.
DENIS DIDEROT -
The decisions of law courts should never be printed: in the long run, they form a counter authority to the law.
DENIS DIDEROT -
The man who first pronounced the barbarous word God ought to have been immediately destroyed.
DENIS DIDEROT -
Superstition is more injurious to God than atheism.
DENIS DIDEROT -
Posterity for the philosopher is what the other world is for the religious man.
DENIS DIDEROT -
If a misplaced admiration shows imbecility, an affected criticism shows vice of character. Expose thyself rather to appear a beast than false.
DENIS DIDEROT -
The bad gives rise to the good, the good inspires the better, the better produces the excellent, the excellent is followed by the bizarre
DENIS DIDEROT -
It is not human nature we should accuse but the despicable conventions that pervert it.
DENIS DIDEROT






