Are we not madder than those first inhabitants of the plain of Sennar? We know that the distance separating the earth from the sky is infinite, and yet we do not stop building our tower.
DENIS DIDEROTWandering 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.
More Denis Diderot Quotes
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Pithy sentences are like sharp nails which force truth upon our memory.
DENIS DIDEROT -
Patriotism is an ephemeral motive that scarcely ever outlasts the particular threat to society that aroused it.
DENIS DIDEROT -
If you want me to believe in God, you must make me touch him.
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 -
Disturbances in society are never more fearful than when those who are stirring up the trouble can use the pretext of religion to mask their true designs.
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Justice is the first virtue of those who command, and stops the complaints of those who obey.
DENIS DIDEROT -
Every man has his dignity. I’m willing to forget mine, but at my own discretion and not when someone else tells me to.
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 -
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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Passions destroy more prejudices than philosophy does.
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.
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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 -
Philosophy is as far separated from impiety as religion is from fanaticism.
DENIS DIDEROT -
Only passions, great passions, can elevate the soul to great things.
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 -
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 -
Oh! how near are genius and madness! Men imprison them and chain them, or raise statues to them.
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 -
Only God and some few rare geniuses can keep forging ahead into novelty.
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 -
Jacques said that his master said that everything good or evil we encounter here below was written on high.
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 -
And his hands would plait the priest’s entrails, For want of a rope, to strangle kings.
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 -
One composition is meagre, though it has many figures; another is rich, though it has few.
DENIS DIDEROT -
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