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Gaiety is a quality of ordinary men. Genius always presupposes some disorder in the machine.

Denis Diderot

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
All children are essentially criminal.
DENIS DIDEROT

Children Crime Essential
The philosopher has never killed any priests, whereas the priest has killed a great many philosophers.
DENIS DIDEROT

Anand Thakur
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

Feeling Instrument Memories Object Surround
Pithy sentences are like sharp nails which force truth upon our memory.
DENIS DIDEROT

Force Memories Ourselves Sentence Truth
Jacques said that his master said that everything good or evil we encounter here below was written on high.
DENIS DIDEROT

Evil Goodness High Master Writing
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

Necessary Order Shake Willing
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

Desire Fact Production True Willing
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

Finding Forest Night Order Stranger Wander Yourself
Time, matter, space – all, it may be, are no more than a point.
DENIS DIDEROT

Anand Thakur
Ignorance is less remote from the truth than prejudice.
DENIS DIDEROT

Ignorance Prejudice Remote Truth
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
One may demand of me that I should seek truth, but not that I should find it.
DENIS DIDEROT

Demand Finding Oneself Seek Truth
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
Posterity for the philosopher is what the other world is for the religious man.
DENIS DIDEROT

Man Philosophy Poster Religious
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

Anand Thakur
He whom we call a gentleman is no longer the man of Nature.
DENIS DIDEROT

Gentle Himself Man Nature
A thing is not proved because no one has ever questioned it. Skepticism is the first step toward truth.
DENIS DIDEROT

Evidence Question Truth
The man who first pronounced the barbarous word God ought to have been immediately destroyed.
DENIS DIDEROT

Destroy Man Pronounce
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

Anand Thakur
If ever anybody dedicated his whole life to the “enthusiasm for truth and justice” using this phrase in the good sense it was Diderot.
DENIS DIDEROT

Dedication Enthusiasm Goodness Life Sense
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
You risk just as much in being credulous as in being suspicious.
DENIS DIDEROT

Anand Thakur
Justice is the first virtue of those who command, and stops the complaints of those who obey.
DENIS DIDEROT

Command Justice Obedience Virtue
Shakespeare’s fault is not the greatest into which a poet may fall. It merely indicates a deficiency of taste.
DENIS DIDEROT

Book Greatness Literature Poet Taste
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
My ideas are my whores.
DENIS DIDEROT

Ideas One Liner Whore

Gaiety is a quality of ordinary men. Genius always presupposes some disorder in the machine.

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Gaiety is a quality of ordinary men. Genius always presupposes some disorder in the machine.

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