The decisions of law courts should never be printed: in the long run, they form a counter authority to the law.
DENIS DIDEROTThere is less harm to be suffered in being mad among madmen than in being sane all by oneself.
More Denis Diderot Quotes
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We swallow with one gulp the lie that flatters us, and drink drop by drop the truth which is bitter to us.
DENIS DIDEROT -
There is only one duty; that is to be happy.
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 -
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 -
There are cats and cats.
DENIS DIDEROT -
Only passions, and great passions, can raise the soul to great things. Without them there is no sublimity, either in morals or in creativity. Art returns to infancy, and virtue becomes small-minded.
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 -
We are far more liable to catch the vices than the virtues of our associates.
DENIS DIDEROT -
No man has received from nature the right to command his fellow human beings.
DENIS DIDEROT -
If you disturb the colors of the rainbow, the rainbow is no longer beautiful.
DENIS DIDEROT -
Whether God exists or does not exist, He has come to rank among the most sublime and useless truths.
DENIS DIDEROT -
Do you see this egg? With this you can topple every theological theory, every church or temple in the world.
DENIS DIDEROT -
We are constantly railing against the passions; we ascribe to them all of man’s afflictions, and we forget that they are also the source of all his pleasures.
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 -
The God of the Christians is a father who makes much of his apples, and very little of his children.
DENIS DIDEROT -
How easy it is to tell tales!
DENIS DIDEROT -
Gaiety is a quality of ordinary men. Genius always presupposes some disorder in the machine.
DENIS DIDEROT -
There is no good father who would want to resemble our Heavenly Father.
DENIS DIDEROT -
To prove the Gospels by a miracle is to prove an absurdity by something contrary to nature.
DENIS DIDEROT -
I feel, I think, I judge; therefore, a part of organized matter like me is capable of feeling, thinking, and judging.
DENIS DIDEROT -
Ignorance is less remote from the truth than prejudice.
DENIS DIDEROT -
To describe women, the pen should be dipped in the humid colors of the rainbow, and the paper dried with the dust gathered from the wings of a butterfly.
DENIS DIDEROT -
Superstition is more injurious to God than atheism.
DENIS DIDEROT -
Only God and some few rare geniuses can keep forging ahead into novelty.
DENIS DIDEROT -
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 DIDEROT -
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