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Patriotism is an ephemeral motive that scarcely ever outlasts the particular threat to society that aroused it.

Denis Diderot

People praise virtue, but they hate it, they run away from it. It freezes you to death, and in this world you’ve got to keep your feet warm.
DENIS DIDEROT

Anand Thakur
Genius is present in every age, but the men carrying it within them remain benumbed unless extraordinary events occur to heat up and melt the mass so that it flows forth.
DENIS DIDEROT

Anand Thakur
There are three principal means of acquiring knowledge, observation of nature, reflection, and experimentation. Observation collects facts; reflection combines them; experimentation verifies the result of that combination.
DENIS DIDEROT

Combination Experiment Knowledge Principle Reflection Result
We swallow with one gulp the lie that flatters us, and drink drop by drop the truth which is bitter to us.
DENIS DIDEROT

Bitter Lying Swallow Truth
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.
DENIS DIDEROT

Design Disturb Trouble True
Which is the greater merit, to enlighten the human race, which remains forever, or to save one’s fatherland, which is perishable?
DENIS DIDEROT

Enlightenment Father Greatness Oneself Perish Save
Justice is the first virtue of those who command, and stops the complaints of those who obey.
DENIS DIDEROT

Command Justice Obedience Virtue
The Christian religion teaches us to imitate a God that is cruel, insidious, jealous, and implacable in his wrath.
DENIS DIDEROT

Anand Thakur
We are far more liable to catch the vices than the virtues of our associates.
DENIS DIDEROT

Association Catch Ourselves Vice
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

Butterfly Color Pen Wings Woman
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

Anand Thakur
Give, but, if possible, spare the poor man the shame of begging.
DENIS DIDEROT

Beg Compassionate Man Poor Possible Shame
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
I feel, I think, I judge; therefore, a part of organized matter like me is capable of feeling, thinking, and judging.
DENIS DIDEROT

Feeling Judgement Thinking
Jacques said that his master said that everything good or evil we encounter here below was written on high.
DENIS DIDEROT

Evil Goodness High Master Writing
There are things I can’t force. I must adjust. There are times when the greatest change needed is a change of my viewpoint.
DENIS DIDEROT

Adjust Change Force Need Point View

Patriotism is an ephemeral motive that scarcely ever outlasts the particular threat to society that aroused it.

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Patriotism is an ephemeral motive that scarcely ever outlasts the particular threat to society that aroused it.

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Popular Authors

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