The decisions of law courts should never be printed: in the long run, they form a counter authority to the law.
DENIS DIDEROTMorals are in all countries the result of legislation and government; they are not African or Asian or European: they are good or bad.
More Denis Diderot Quotes
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We swallow with one gulp the lie that flatters us, and drink drop by drop the truth which is bitter to us.
DENIS DIDEROT -
When we know to read our own hearts, we acquire wisdom of the heartsof others.
DENIS DIDEROT -
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 -
What a fine comedy this world would be if one did not play a part in it.
DENIS DIDEROT -
It is very important not to mistake hemlock for parsley, but to believe or not believe in God is not important at all.
DENIS DIDEROT -
Ignorance is less remote from the truth than prejudice.
DENIS DIDEROT -
One composition is meagre, though it has many figures; another is rich, though it has few.
DENIS DIDEROT -
We are constantly railing against the passions; we ascribe to them all of man’s afflictions, and we forget that they are also the source of all his pleasures.
DENIS DIDEROT -
There is less harm to be suffered in being mad among madmen than in being sane all by oneself.
DENIS DIDEROT -
Posterity for the philosopher is what the other world is for the religious man.
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 -
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.
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There’s a bit of testicle at the bottom of our most sublime feelings and our purest tenderness.
DENIS DIDEROT -
Gaiety is a quality of ordinary men. Genius always presupposes some disorder in the machine.
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