The decisions of law courts should never be printed: in the long run, they form a counter authority to the law.
DENIS DIDEROTScepticism is the first step toward truth.
More Denis Diderot Quotes
-
-
What has not been examined impartially has not been well examined. Skepticism is therefore the first step towards truth.
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 -
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 -
Passions destroy more prejudices than philosophy does.
DENIS DIDEROT -
If there is one realm in which it is essential to be sublime, it is in wickedness. You spit on a petty thief, but you can’t deny a kind of respect for the great criminal.
DENIS DIDEROT -
Our observation of nature must be diligent, our reflection profound, and our experiments exact. We rarely see these three means combined; and for this reason, creative geniuses are not common.
DENIS DIDEROT -
Wandering in a vast forest at night, I have only a faint light to guide me. A stranger appears and says to me: ‘My friend, you should blow out your candle in order to find your way more clearly.’ This stranger is a theologian.
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 -
Scepticism is the first step towards truth.
DENIS DIDEROT -
For me, my thoughts are my prostitutes.
DENIS DIDEROT -
Although a man may wear fine clothing, if he lives peacefully; and is good, self-possessed, has faith and is pure; and if he does not hurt any living being, he is a holy man.
DENIS DIDEROT -
It is said that desire is a product of the will, but the converse is in fact true: will is a product of desire.
DENIS DIDEROT -
There is only one passion, the passion for happiness.
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 -
There is only one duty; that is to be happy.
DENIS DIDEROT -
The Christian religion teaches us to imitate a God that is cruel, insidious, jealous, and implacable in his wrath.
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 -
I have not the hope of being immortal, because the desire of it has not given me that vanity.
DENIS DIDEROT -
Philosophy is as far separated from impiety as religion is from fanaticism.
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 -
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 -
The blood of Jesus Christ can cover a multitude of sins, it seems to me.
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 -
Integrity is the evidence of all civil virtues.
DENIS DIDEROT -
At an early age I sucked up the milk of Homer, Virgil, Horace, Terence, Anacreon, Plato and Euripides, diluted with that of Moses and the prophets.
DENIS DIDEROT