There is no true sovereign except the nation; there can be no true legislator except the people.
DENIS DIDEROTPithy sentences are like sharp nails which force truth upon our memory.
More Denis Diderot Quotes
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When we know to read our own hearts, we acquire wisdom of the heartsof others.
DENIS DIDEROT -
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 -
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 -
Ignorance is less remote from the truth than prejudice.
DENIS DIDEROT -
Poetry needs something on the scale of the grand, the barbarous, the savage.
DENIS DIDEROT -
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.
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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.
DENIS DIDEROT -
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.
DENIS DIDEROT -
Two qualities essential for the artist: moralityand perspective.
DENIS DIDEROT -
If you want me to believe in God, you must make me touch him.
DENIS DIDEROT -
In general, children, like men, and men, like children, prefer entertainment to education.
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 -
Only passions, great passions, can elevate the soul to great things.
DENIS DIDEROT -
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.
DENIS DIDEROT -
We 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.
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.
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I have not the hope of being immortal, because the desire of it has not given me that vanity.
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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.
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Whether God exists or does not exist, He has come to rank among the most sublime and useless truths.
DENIS DIDEROT -
All children are essentially criminal.
DENIS DIDEROT -
The best doctor is the one you run to and can’t find.
DENIS DIDEROT -
No man has received from nature the right to command his fellow human beings.
DENIS DIDEROT -
There is less harm to be suffered in being mad among madmen than in being sane all by oneself.
DENIS DIDEROT -
Whatever dressing one gives to mushrooms, to whatever sauces our Apiciuses put them, they are not really good but to be sent back to the dungheap where they are born.
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Isn’t it better to have men being ungrateful than to miss a chance to do good?
DENIS DIDEROT -
Anyone who takes it upon himself, on his private authority, to break a bad law, thereby authorizes everyone else to break the good ones.
DENIS DIDEROT