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 DIDEROTTo 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.
More Denis Diderot Quotes
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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 -
All abstract sciences are nothing but the study of relations between signs.
DENIS DIDEROT -
My friend, you should blow out your candle in order to find your way more clearly.
DENIS DIDEROT -
Two qualities essential for the artist: moralityand perspective.
DENIS DIDEROT -
Morals are in all countries the result of legislation and government; they are not African or Asian or European: they are good or bad.
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 -
Only passions, great passions, can elevate the soul to great things.
DENIS DIDEROT -
Gratitude is a burden, and every burden is made to be shaken off.
DENIS DIDEROT -
Ignorance is less remote from the truth than prejudice.
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 -
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 -
What is a monster? A being whose survival is incompatible with the existing order.
DENIS DIDEROT -
Patriotism is an ephemeral motive that scarcely ever outlasts the particular threat to society that aroused it.
DENIS DIDEROT -
There is no kind of harassment that a man may not inflict on a woman with impunity in civilized societies.
DENIS DIDEROT -
The general interest of the masses might take the place of the insight of genius if it were allowed freedom of action.
DENIS DIDEROT -
Time, matter, space – all, it may be, are no more than a point.
DENIS DIDEROT -
You have to make it happen.
DENIS DIDEROT -
He whom we call a gentleman is no longer the man of Nature.
DENIS DIDEROT -
Philosophy is as far separated from impiety as religion is from fanaticism.
DENIS DIDEROT -
And his hands would plait the priest’s entrails, For want of a rope, to strangle kings.
DENIS DIDEROT -
You risk just as much in being credulous as in being suspicious.
DENIS DIDEROT -
It is raining bombs on the house of the Lord. I go in fear and trembling lest one of these terrible bombers gets into difficulties.
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 -
My ideas are my whores.
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 -
The man who first pronounced the barbarous word God ought to have been immediately destroyed.
DENIS DIDEROT