The decisions of law courts should never be printed: in the long run, they form a counter authority to the law.
DENIS DIDEROTOh! how near are genius and madness! Men imprison them and chain them, or raise statues to them.
More Denis Diderot Quotes
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There is no good father who would want to resemble our Heavenly Father.
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 -
The Christian religion teaches us to imitate a God that is cruel, insidious, jealous, and implacable in his wrath.
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 -
The pit of a theatre is the one place where the tears of virtuous and wicked men alike are mingled.
DENIS DIDEROT -
I am wholly yours – you are everything to me; we will sustain each other in all the ills of life it may please fate to inflict upon us; you will soothe my troubles; I will comfort you in yours.
DENIS DIDEROT -
It has been said that love robs those who have it of their wit, and gives it to those who have none.
DENIS DIDEROT -
Skepticism is the first step on the road to philosophy.
DENIS DIDEROT -
Scepticism is the first step towards truth.
DENIS DIDEROT -
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 -
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 -
Which is the greater merit, to enlighten the human race, which remains forever, or to save one’s fatherland, which is perishable?
DENIS DIDEROT -
Poetry needs something on the scale of the grand, the barbarous, the savage.
DENIS DIDEROT -
Mankind have banned the Divinity from their presence; they have relegated him to a sanctuary; the walls of the temple restrict his view; he does not exist outside of it.
DENIS DIDEROT -
One composition is meagre, though it has many figures; another is rich, though it has few.
DENIS DIDEROT






