“Doctors are always working to preserve our health and cooks to destroy it, but the latter are the more often successful.”

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.

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.

The bad gives rise to the good, the good inspires the better, the better produces the excellent, the excellent is followed by the bizarre

Ignorance is less remote from the truth than prejudice.

What is a monster? A being whose survival is incompatible with the existing order.

Integrity is the evidence of all civil virtues.

First move me, astonish me, break my heart, let me tremble, weep, stare, be enraged-only then regale my eyes.

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

There is less harm to be suffered in being mad among madmen than in being sane all by oneself.

The wisest among us is very lucky never to have met the woman, be she beautiful or ugly, intelligent or stupid, who could drive him crazy enough to be fit to be put into an asylum.

My ideas are my whores.

There is only one passion, the passion for happiness.

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

Passions destroy more prejudices than philosophy does.

The infant runs toward it with its eyes closed, the adult is stationary, the old man approaches it with his back turned.

First of all move me, surprise me, rend my heart; make me tremble, weep, shudder; outrage me; delight my eyes afterwards if you can.

When I orbited the Earth in a spaceship, I saw for the first time how beautiful our planet is. Mankind, let us preserve and increase this beauty, and not destroy it!

He who can preserve gentleness amid pains, and peace amid worry multitude of affairs, is almost perfect.

It is said of great Empires, That the best way to preserve them from decay, is to bring them back to the first Principles, and Arts, on which they did begin.”

Opportunity expands when there is excellence and choice in education, when taxes are lowered, when every citizen has affordable, portable health insurance and when constitutional freedoms are preserved.

The children despise their parents until the age of when they suddenly become just like them – thus preserving the system.

To preserve health is a moral and religious duty: for health is the basis of all social virtues; and we can be useful no longer than while we are well.

I would willingly go more primitive if it were necessary to preserve my freedom.

I would willingly go more primitive if it were necessary to preserve my freedom.