What has not been examined impartially has not been well examined. Skepticism is therefore the first step towards truth.
DENIS DIDEROTIt is very important not to mistake hemlock for parsley, but to believe or not believe in God is not important at all.
More Denis Diderot Quotes
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You risk just as much in being credulous as in being suspicious.
DENIS DIDEROT -
No man has received from nature the right to command his fellow human beings.
DENIS DIDEROT -
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 -
The infant runs toward it with its eyes closed, the adult is stationary, the old man approaches it with his back turned.
DENIS DIDEROT -
It is not human nature we should accuse but the despicable conventions that pervert it.
DENIS DIDEROT -
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 -
Evil always turns up in this world through some genius or other.
DENIS DIDEROT -
Only a very bad theologian would confuse the certainty that follows revelation with the truths that are revealed. They are entirely different things.
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.
DENIS DIDEROT -
From fanaticism to barbarism is only one step.
DENIS DIDEROT -
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 DIDEROT -
In order to shake a hypothesis, it is sometimes not necessary to do anything more than push it as far as it will go.
DENIS DIDEROT -
He whom we call a gentleman is no longer the man of Nature.
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 -
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.
DENIS DIDEROT -
There are cats and cats.
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 -
For me, my thoughts are my prostitutes.
DENIS DIDEROT -
The Christian religion teaches us to imitate a God that is cruel, insidious, jealous, and implacable in his wrath.
DENIS DIDEROT -
My ideas are my whores.
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 -
There’s a bit of testicle at the bottom of our most sublime feelings and our purest tenderness.
DENIS DIDEROT -
All abstract sciences are nothing but the study of relations between signs.
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 -
How easy it is to tell tales!
DENIS DIDEROT -
If ever anybody dedicated his whole life to the “enthusiasm for truth and justice” using this phrase in the good sense it was Diderot.
DENIS DIDEROT