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 DIDEROTEvery man has his dignity. I’m willing to forget mine, but at my own discretion and not when someone else tells me to.
More Denis Diderot Quotes
-
-
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 -
There is only one passion, the passion for happiness.
DENIS DIDEROT -
We are far more liable to catch the vices than the virtues of our associates.
DENIS DIDEROT -
My ideas are my whores.
DENIS DIDEROT -
One may demand of me that I should seek truth, but not that I should find it.
DENIS DIDEROT -
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 -
Superstition is more injurious to God than atheism.
DENIS DIDEROT -
The best mannered people make the most absurd lovers.
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 -
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 -
For me, my thoughts are my prostitutes.
DENIS DIDEROT -
Evil always turns up in this world through some genius or other.
DENIS DIDEROT -
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 -
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 -
A thing is not proved because no one has ever questioned it. Skepticism is the first step toward truth.
DENIS DIDEROT -
There is no moral precept that does not have something inconvenient about it.
DENIS DIDEROT -
You have to make it happen.
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 -
Only passions, great passions, can elevate the soul to great things.
DENIS DIDEROT -
The possibility of divorce renders both marriage partners stricter in their observance of the duties they owe to each other. Divorces help to improve morals and to increase the population.
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 -
Does anyone really know where they’re going to?
DENIS DIDEROT -
To prove the Gospels by a miracle is to prove an absurdity by something contrary to nature.
DENIS DIDEROT -
Philosophy is as far separated from impiety as religion is from fanaticism.
DENIS DIDEROT -
No man has received from nature the right to give orders to others. Freedom is a gift from heaven, and every individual of the same species has the right to enjoy it as soon as he is in enjoyment of his reason.
DENIS DIDEROT -
Do you see this egg? With this you can topple every theological theory, every church or temple in the world.
DENIS DIDEROT