Denis Diderot Quotes

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

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

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

Those who fear the facts will forever try to discredit the fact-finders.

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.

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

All things must be examined, debated, investigated without exception and without regard for anyone's feelings... We must run roughshod over all these ancient puerilities, overturn the barriers that reason never erected, give back to the arts and sciences the liberty that is so precious to them.

Skepticism is the first step on the road to philosophy.

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

In general, children, like men, and men, like children, prefer entertainment to education.

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.

A thing is not proved just because no one has ever questioned it. What has never been gone into impartially has never been properly gone into. Hence scepticism is the first step toward truth. It must be applied generally, because it is the touchstone.

Pithy sentences are like sharp nails which force truth upon our memory.

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.

Doctors are always working to preserve our health and cooks to destroy it, but the latter are the more often successful.

From fanaticism to barbarism is only one step.

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

Happiest are the people who give most happiness to others.

The philosopher has never killed any priests, whereas the priest has killed a great many philosophers.

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.

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.

Give, but, if possible, spare the poor man the shame of begging.

Only the bad man is alone.

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.

There is only one passion, the passion for happiness.

There are things I can't force. I must adjust. There are times when the greatest change needed is a change of my viewpoint.

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.

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.

My ideas are my whores.

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.

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

First move me, astonish me, break my heart, let me tremble, weep, stare, be enraged-only then regale my eyes.

Wandering in a vast forest at night, I have only a faint light to guide me. A stranger appears and says to me: 'My friend, you should blow out your candle in order to find your way more clearly.' This stranger is a theologian.

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, dice box in hand, shaking the dice.

The man who first pronounced the barbarous word God ought to have been immediately destroyed.

To prove the Gospels by a miracle is to prove an absurdity by something contrary to nature.

You have to make it happen.

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.

Une danse est un poe' me. A dance is a poem.

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.

The Christian religion teaches us to imitate a God that is cruel, insidious, jealous, and implacable in his wrath.

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

As long as the centuries continue to unfold, the number of books will grow continually, and one can predict that a time will come when it will be almost as difficult to learn anything from books as from the direct study of the whole universe. It will be almost as convenient to search for some bit of truth concealed in nature as it will be to find it hidden away in an immense multitude of bound volumes.

First of all move me, surprise me, rend my heart; make me tremble, weep, shudder; outrage me; delight my eyes afterwards if you can.

No man has received from nature the right to give orders to others. Freedom is a gift from heaven, and every individual of the same species has the right to enjoy it as soon as he is in enjoyment of his reason.

But if you will recall the history of our civil troubles, you will see half the nation bathe itself, out of piety, in the blood of the other half, and violate the fundamental feelings of humanity in order to sustain the cause of God: as though it were necessary to cease to be a man in order to prove oneself religious!

Gratitude is a burden, and every burden is made to be shaken off.

Scepticism is the first step towards truth.

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

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.