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 DIDEROTYou risk just as much in being credulous as in being suspicious.
More Denis Diderot Quotes
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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 -
And his hands would plait the priest’s entrails, For want of a rope, to strangle kings.
DENIS DIDEROT -
I can be expected to look for truth but not to find it.
DENIS DIDEROT -
Integrity is the evidence of all civil virtues.
DENIS DIDEROT -
Ignorance is less remote from the truth than prejudice.
DENIS DIDEROT -
We swallow with one gulp the lie that flatters us, and drink drop by drop the truth which is bitter to us.
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 -
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 -
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 -
Justice is the first virtue of those who command, and stops the complaints of those who obey.
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 -
There are three principal means of acquiring knowledge, observation of nature, reflection, and experimentation. Observation collects facts; reflection combines them; experimentation verifies the result of that combination.
DENIS DIDEROT -
All abstract sciences are nothing but the study of relations between signs.
DENIS DIDEROT -
Superstition is more injurious to God than atheism.
DENIS DIDEROT -
If you want me to believe in God, you must make me touch him.
DENIS DIDEROT -
Instinct guides the animal better than the man. In the animal it is pure, in man it is led astray by his reason and intelligence.
DENIS DIDEROT -
Whether God exists or does not exist, He has come to rank among the most sublime and useless truths.
DENIS DIDEROT -
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 -
If there is one realm in which it is essential to be sublime, it is in wickedness. You spit on a petty thief, but you can’t deny a kind of respect for the great criminal.
DENIS DIDEROT -
In any country where talent and virtue produce no advancement, money will be the national god. Its inhabitants will either have to possess money or make others believe that they do. Wealth will be the highest virtue, poverty the greatest vice.
DENIS DIDEROT -
There are things I can’t force. I must adjust. There are times when the greatest change needed is a change of my viewpoint.
DENIS DIDEROT -
Two qualities essential for the artist: moralityand perspective.
DENIS DIDEROT -
If you disturb the colors of the rainbow, the rainbow is no longer beautiful.
DENIS DIDEROT -
Gaiety is a quality of ordinary men. Genius always presupposes some disorder in the machine.
DENIS DIDEROT -
No man has received from nature the right to command his fellow human beings.
DENIS DIDEROT -
In order to get as much fame as one’s father one has to much more able than he.
DENIS DIDEROT