Denis Diderot Quotes

111 Sourced Quotes

I believe in God, although I live very happily with atheists... It is very important not to mistake hemlock for parsley; but not at all so to believe or not in God.

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
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.

Denis Diderot
Bad company is as instructive as licentiousness. One makes up for the loss of one's innocence with the loss of one's prejudices.

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
All abstract sciences are nothing but the study of relations between signs.

Denis Diderot
The general interest of the masses might take the place of the insight of genius if it were allowed freedom of action.

Denis Diderot
There are two sorts of laws, those of absolute equity and universality, and the bizarre ones which owe their autonomy only to blindness or to the force of circumstance. The latter merely cover the man who is breaking them with a passing disgrace, which time then transfers to the judges and the nations, on whom it remains forever.

Denis Diderot
One gulps down the flattering lie and sips the bitter truth.

Denis Diderot
The possibility of divorce renders both marriage partners stricter in their observance of the duties they owe to each other. Divorces help to improve morals and to increase the population.

Denis Diderot
Do you see this egg? With this you can topple every theological theory, every church or temple in the world. What is it, this egg, before the seed is introduced into it? An insentient mass. And after the seed has been introduced to into it? What is it then? An insentient mass. For what is the seed itself other than a crude and inanimate fluid? How is this mass to make a transition to a different structure, to sentience, to life? Through heat. And what will produce that heat in it? Motion.

Denis Diderot
And [with] the guts of the last priest
Let's shake the neck of the last king.

Denis Diderot
How old the world is! I walk between two eternities... What is my fleeting existence in comparison with that decaying rock, that valley digging its channel ever deeper, that forest that is tottering and those great masses above my head about to fall? I see the marble of tombs crumbling into dust; and yet I don't want to die!

Denis Diderot
Every man has his dignity. I'm willing to forget mine, but at my own discretion and not when someone else tells me to.

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
Watch out for the fellow who talks about putting things in order! Putting things in order always means getting other people under your control.

Denis Diderot
The fact is that she was terribly undressed and I was extremely undressed too. The fact is that I still had my hand where she didn't have anything and she had hers where the same wasn't quite true of me. The fact is that I found myself underneath her and consequently she found herself on top of me.

Denis Diderot
Strong thoughts are iron nails driven in the mind, that nothing can draw out.

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

Denis Diderot
There are three principal means of acquiring knowledge available to us: observation of nature, reflection, and experimentation. Observation collects facts; reflection combines them; experimentation verifies the result of that combination. 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
Pithy sentences are like sharp nails which force truth upon our memory.

Denis Diderot
The blood of Jesus Christ can cover a multitude of sins, it seems to me.

Denis Diderot
In order to shake a hypothesis, it is sometimes not necessary to do anything more than push it as far as it will go.

Denis Diderot
Happiest are the people who give most happiness to others.

Denis Diderot
Go further, and require each of them to make a contribution: you will see how many things are still missing, and you will be obliged to get the assistance of a large number of men who belong to different classes, priceless men, but to whom the gates of the academies are nonetheless closed because of their social station. All the members of these learned societies are more than is needed for a single object of human science; all the societies together are not sufficient for a science of man in general.

Denis Diderot