Denis Diderot quotes - page 3

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)
There is only one virtue, justice; only one duty, to be happy; only one corollary, not to overvalue life and not to fear death. View quote
Denis Diderot
To prove the Gospels by a miracle is to prove an absurdity by something contrary to nature. View quote
Denis Diderot
Although a man may wear fine clothing, if he lives peacefully; and is good, self-possessed, has faith and is pure; and if he does not hurt any living being, he is a holy man. View quote
Denis Diderot
Distance is a great promoter of admiration. View quote
Denis Diderot
The world is the house of the strong. I shall not know until the end what I have lost or won in this place, in this vast gambling den where I have spent more than sixty years, dicebox in hand, shaking the dice. View quote
Denis Diderot
There's a bit of testicle at the bottom of our most sublime feelings and our purest tenderness. View quote
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. View quote
Denis Diderot
To say that man is a compound of strength and weakness, light and darkness, smallness and greatness, is not to indict him, it is to define him. View quote
Denis Diderot
What a hell of an economic system! Some are replete with everything while others, whose stomachs are no less demanding, whose hunger is just as recurrent, have nothing to bite on. The worst of it is the constrained posture need puts you in. The needy man does not walk like the rest; he skips, slithers, twists, crawls. View quote
Denis Diderot
It has been said that love robs those who have it of their wit, and gives it to those who have none. (Denis Diderot)
I discuss with myself questions of politics, love, taste, or philosophy. I let my mind rove wantonly, give it free rein to follow any idea, wise or mad that may present itself. ... My ideas are my harlots. View quote
Denis Diderot
Oh how near are genius and madness Men imprison them and chain them, or raise statues to them. View quote
Denis Diderot
If exclusive privileges were not granted, and if the financial system would not tend to concentrate wealth, there would be few great fortunes and no quick wealth. When the means of growing rich is divided between a greater number of citizens, wealth will also be more evenly distributed; extreme poverty and extreme wealth would be also rare. View quote
Denis Diderot
Superstition is more injurious to God than atheism. View quote
Denis Diderot
The good of the people must be the great purpose of government. By the laws of nature and of reason, the governors are invested with power to that end. And the greatest good of the people is liberty. It is to the state what health is to the individual. View quote
Denis Diderot
When shall we see poets born? After a time of disasters and great misfortunes, when harrowed nations begin to breathe again. And then, shaken by the terror of such spectacles, imaginations will paint things entirely strange to those who have not witnessed them. View quote
Denis Diderot
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. View quote
Denis Diderot
How easy it is to tell tales! View quote
Denis Diderot
Man was born to live with his fellow human beings. Separate him, isolate him, his character will go bad, a thousand ridiculous affects will invade his heart, extravagant thoughts will germinate in his brain, like thorns in an uncultivated land. View quote
Denis Diderot
If your little savage were left to himself and be allowed to retain all his ignorance, he would in time join the infant's reasoning to the grown man's passion, he would strangle his father and sleep with his mother. (Denis Diderot)
There is not a Musselman alive who would not imagine that he was performing an action pleasing to God and his Holy Prophet by exterminating every Christian on earth, while the Christians are scarcely more tolerant on their side. View quote
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. View quote
Denis Diderot
Jacques said that his master said that everything good or evil we encounter here below was written on high. View quote
Denis Diderot
The first promise exchanged by two beings of flesh was at the foot of a rock that was crumbling into dust; they took as witness for their constancy a sky that is not the same for a single instant; everything changed in them and around them, and they believed their hearts free of vicissitudes. O children! always children! View quote
Denis Diderot