Denis Diderot Quotes

How had they met? By chance, like everybody else. What were there names? What's it to you? Where were they coming from? From the nearest place. Where were they going? Does anyone really know where they're going?

~ Denis Diderot

Scepticism is the first step towards truth.

~ Denis Diderot

One swallows the lie that flatters, but sips the bitter truth drop by drop.

~ Denis Diderot

All things must be examined, debated, investigated without exception and without regard for anyone's feelings.

~ Denis Diderot

Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.

~ Denis Diderot

You live as if you were destined to live forever, no thought of your frailty ever enters your head, of how much time has already gone by you take no heed. You squander time as if you drew from a full and abundant supply, so all the while that day which you bestow on some person or thing is perhaps your last. You have all the fears of mortals and all the desires of immortals… What foolish forgetfulness of mortality to defer wise resolutions to the fiftieth or sixtieth year, and to intend to begin life at a point to which few have attained.

~ Denis Diderot

Do you see this egg? With this you can topple every theological theory, every church or temple in the world.

~ Denis Diderot

One declaims endlessly against the passions, one imputes all of man's suffering to them. One forgets that they are also the source of all his pleasures.

~ Denis Diderot

Only passions, great passions, can elevate the soul to great things.

~ Denis Diderot

The most dangerous madmen are those created by religion, and ... people whose aim is to disrupt society always know how to make good use of them on occasion.

~ Denis Diderot

It is very important not to mistake hemlock for parsley, but not at all so to believe or not in God.

~ Denis Diderot

If you want me to believe in God, you must make me touch him.

~ Denis Diderot

I picture the vast realm of the sciences as an immense landscape scattered with patches of dark and light. The goal towards which we must work is either to extend the boundaries of the patches of light, or to increase their number. One of these tasks falls to the creative genius; the other requires a sort of sagacity combined with perfectionism.

~ Denis Diderot

People stop thinking when they cease to read.

~ Denis Diderot

Whether God exists or does not exist, He has come to rank among the most sublime and useless truths.

~ Denis Diderot

Oh! how near are genius and madness! Men imprison them and chain them, or raise statues to them.

~ Denis Diderot

One cannot get rid of a good education, nor, unfortunately, of a bad one, which often is such because one has not wanted to defray the expenses of a good one.

~ Denis Diderot

Isn't it better to have men be ungrateful than to miss a chance to do good?

~ 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

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

It is not human nature we should accuse but the despicable conventions that pervert it.

~ Denis Diderot

When science, art, literature, and philosophy are simply the manifestation of personality they are on a level where glorious and dazzling achievements are possible, which can make a man's name live for thousands of years.

~ Denis Diderot

There is only one passion, the passion for happiness.

~ Denis Diderot

Disturbances in society are never more fearful than when those who are stirring up the trouble can use the pretext of religion to mask their true designs.

~ Denis Diderot

The best doctor is the one you run to and can't find.

~ Denis Diderot

Power acquired by violence is only a usurpation, and lasts only as long as the force of him who commands prevails over that of those who obey.

~ Denis Diderot

No man has received from nature the right to command his fellow human beings.

~ Denis Diderot

We swallow greedily any lie that flatters us, but we sip only little by little at a truth we find bitter.

~ Denis Diderot

Only passions, great passions can elevate the soul to great things.

~ Denis Diderot

Patriotism is an ephemeral motive that scarcely ever outlasts the particular threat to society that aroused it.

~ 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.

~ Denis Diderot

You have to make it happen.

~ Denis Diderot

Poetry must have something in it that is barbaric, vast and wild.

~ Denis Diderot

When superstition is allowed to perform the task of old age in dulling the human temperament, we can say goodbye to all excellence in poetry, in painting, and in music.

~ 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

Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.

~ Denis Diderot