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Only God and some few rare geniuses can keep forging ahead into novelty.

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

Authority Break Goodness Oneself Privacy
First of all move me, surprise me, rend my heart; make me tremble, weep, shudder; outrage me; delight my eyes afterwards if you can.
DENIS DIDEROT

Delight Move Surprise Yourself
My ideas are my whores.
DENIS DIDEROT

Ideas One Liner Whore
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

Anand Thakur
The general interest of the masses might take the place of the insight of genius if it were allowed freedom of action.
DENIS DIDEROT

Action Allow Freedom Genius Interest Place
Gaiety is a quality of ordinary men. Genius always presupposes some disorder in the machine.
DENIS DIDEROT

Machine Order Ordinary Quality
Two qualities essential for the artist: moralityand perspective.
DENIS DIDEROT

Artist Essential Moral Perspective Quality
If there are one hundred thousand damned souls for one saved soul, the devil has always the advantage without having given up his son to death.
DENIS DIDEROT

Anand Thakur
Which is the greater merit, to enlighten the human race, which remains forever, or to save one’s fatherland, which is perishable?
DENIS DIDEROT

Enlightenment Father Greatness Oneself Perish Save
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

Anand Thakur
Whatever dressing one gives to mushrooms, to whatever sauces our Apiciuses put them, they are not really good but to be sent back to the dungheap where they are born.
DENIS DIDEROT

Anand Thakur
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

Difficult God Home Raining
There’s a bit of testicle at the bottom of our most sublime feelings and our purest tenderness.
DENIS DIDEROT

Anand Thakur
All children are essentially criminal.
DENIS DIDEROT

Children Crime Essential
How easy it is to tell tales!
DENIS DIDEROT

Easy Story
It is not human nature we should accuse but the despicable conventions that pervert it.
DENIS DIDEROT

Anand Thakur
There is no moral precept that does not have something inconvenient about it.
DENIS DIDEROT

Convenience Moral Perception
Justice is the first virtue of those who command, and stops the complaints of those who obey.
DENIS DIDEROT

Command Justice Obedience Virtue
All abstract sciences are nothing but the study of relations between signs.
DENIS DIDEROT

Abstract Relationship Sign Study
A nation which thinks that it is belief in God and not good law which makes people honest does not seem to me very advanced.
DENIS DIDEROT

Belief Law Myself Nation People Thinking
For me, my thoughts are my prostitutes.
DENIS DIDEROT

Myself Prostitute Thinking
Only God and some few rare geniuses can keep forging ahead into novelty.
DENIS DIDEROT

God Novel Rare
Time, matter, space – all, it may be, are no more than a point.
DENIS DIDEROT

Anand Thakur
Do you see this egg? With this you can topple every theological theory, every church or temple in the world.
DENIS DIDEROT

See Theory World
Pithy sentences are like sharp nails which force truth upon our memory.
DENIS DIDEROT

Force Memories Ourselves Sentence Truth
Philosophy is as far separated from impiety as religion is from fanaticism.
DENIS DIDEROT

Philosophy Religion Separate
Patriotism is an ephemeral motive that scarcely ever outlasts the particular threat to society that aroused it.
DENIS DIDEROT

Arouse Patriot Society

Only God and some few rare geniuses can keep forging ahead into novelty.

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Only God and some few rare geniuses can keep forging ahead into novelty.

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