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Denis Diderot

95 quotes

“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.”
Denis Diderot (1713–1784) said by 1784 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is not human nature we should accuse but the despicable conventions that pervert it.”
Denis Diderot (1713–1784) said by 1784 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Poetry must have something in it that is barbaric, vast and wild.”
Denis Diderot (1713–1784) said by 1784 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Denis Diderot (1713–1784) said by 1784 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Shakespeare’s fault is not the greatest into which a poet may fall. It merely indicates a deficiency of taste.”
Denis Diderot (1713–1784) said by 1784 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1713–1784) said by 1784 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1713–1784) said by 1784 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1713–1784) said by 1784 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“People praise virtue, but they hate it, they run away from it. It freezes you to death, and in this world you've got to keep your feet warm.”
Denis Diderot (1713–1784) said by 1784 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Je m’entretiens avec moi-même de politique, d’amour, de goût ou de philosophie ; j’abandonne mon esprit à tout son libertinage ; je le laisse maître de suivre la première idée sage ou folle qui se présente … Mes pensées ce sont mes catins.”
Denis Diderot (1713–1784) said by 1784 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“La reconnaissance est un fardeau, et tout fardeau est fait pour être secoué.”
Denis Diderot (1713–1784) said by 1784 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We swallow greedily any lie that flatters us, but we sip only little by little at a truth we find bitter.”
Denis Diderot (1713–1784) said by 1784 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1713–1784) said by 1784 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Denis Diderot (1713–1784) said by 1784 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All abstract sciences are nothing but the study of relations between signs.”
Denis Diderot (1713–1784) said by 1784 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We are all instruments endowed with feeling and memory. Our senses are so many strings that are struck by surrounding objects and that also frequently strike themselves.”
Denis Diderot (1713–1784) said by 1784 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1713–1784) said by 1784 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Conversation Between D’Alembert and Diderot”, as quoted in Selected Writings (1966) edited by Lester G. Crocker, and The Enlightenment and the Intellectual Foundations of Modern Culture (2004) by Louis K Dupré, p. 30
“Égaré dans une forêt immense pendant la nuit, je n’ai qu’une petite lumière pour me conduire. Survient un inconnu qui me dit : Mon ami, souffle ta bougie pour mieux trouver ton chemin. Cet inconnu est un théologien. — No VIII”
Denis Diderot (1713–1784) said by 1784 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1713–1784) said by 1784 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[L]e philosophe n'a jamais tué de prêtres et le prêtre a tué beaucoup de philosophes...”
Denis Diderot (1713–1784) said by 1784 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Morals are in all countries the result of legislation and government; they are not African or Asian or European: they are good or bad.”
Denis Diderot (1713–1784) said by 1784 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Patriotism is an ephemeral motive that scarcely ever outlasts the particular threat to society that aroused it.”
Denis Diderot (1713–1784) said by 1784 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1713–1784) said by 1784 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The general interest of the masses might take the place of the insight of genius if it were allowed freedom of action.”
Denis Diderot (1713–1784) said by 1784 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The decisions of law courts should never be printed: in the long run, they form a counterauthority to the law.”
Denis Diderot (1713–1784) said by 1784 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The blood of Jesus Christ can cover a multitude of sins, it seems to me.”
Denis Diderot (1713–1784) said by 1784 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1713–1784) said by 1784 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Denis Diderot (1713–1784) said by 1784 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Jacques said that his master said that everything good or evil we encounter here below was written on high.”
Denis Diderot (1713–1784) said by 1784 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“How did they meet? By chance, like everybody … Where did they come from? From the nearest place. Where were they going? Do we know where we are going?”
Denis Diderot (1713–1784) said by 1784 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“How easy it is to tell tales!”
Denis Diderot (1713–1784) said by 1784 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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!”
Denis Diderot (1713–1784) said by 1784 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Gaiety — a quality of ordinary men. Genius always presupposes some disorder in the machine.”
Denis Diderot (1713–1784) said by 1784 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Good music is very close to primitive language.”
Denis Diderot (1713–1784) said by 1784 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The infant runs toward it with its eyes closed, the adult is stationary, the old man approaches it with his back turned.”
Denis Diderot (1713–1784) said by 1784 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is said that desire is a product of the will, but the converse is in fact true: will is a product of desire.”
Denis Diderot (1713–1784) said by 1784 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is only one passion, the passion for happiness.”
Denis Diderot (1713–1784) said by 1784 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1713–1784) said by 1784 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What is this world? A complex whole, subject to endless revolutions. All these revolutions show a continual tendency to destruction; a swift succession of beings who follow one another, press forward, and vanish; a fleeting symmetry; the order of a moment. I reproached you just now with estimating the perfection of things by your own capacity; and I might accuse you here of measuring its duration by the length of your own days. You judge of the continuous existence of the world, as an ephemeral insect might judge of yours. The world is eternal for you, as you are eternal to the being that lives but for one instant. Yet the insect is the more reasonable of the two. For what a prodigious succession of ephemeral generations attests your eternity! What an immeasurable tradition! Yet shall we all pass away, without the possibility of assigning either the real extension that we filled in space, or the precise time that we shall have endured. Time, matter, space — all, it may be, are no more than a point.”
Denis Diderot (1713–1784) first seen 1749 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Dying words of Nicholas Saunderson as portrayed in Lettre sur les aveugles [Letter on the Blind] (1749)
“As to all the outward signs that awaken within us feelings of sympathy and compassion, the blind are only affected by crying; I suspect them in general of lacking humanity. What difference is there for a blind man, between a man who is urinating, and man who, without crying out, is bleeding? And we ourselves, do we not cease to commiserate, when the distance or the smallness of the objects in question produce the same effect on us as the lack of sight produces in the blind man? All our virtues depend on the faculty of the senses, and on the degree to which external things affect us. Thus I do not doubt that, except for the fear of punishment, many people would not feel any remorse for killing a man from a distance at which he appeared no larger than a swallow. No more, at any rate, than they would for slaughtering a cow up close. If we feel compassion for a horse that suffers, but if we squash an ant without any scruple, isn’t the same principle at work?”
Denis Diderot (1713–1784) first seen 1749 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Lettre sur les aveugles [Letter on the Blind] (1749)
“The more man ascends through the past, and the more he launches into the future, the greater he will be, and all these philosophers and ministers and truth-telling men who have fallen victims to the stupidity of nations, the atrocities of priests, the fury of tyrants, what consolation was left for them in death? This: That prejudice would pass, and that posterity would pour out the vial of ignominy upon their enemies. O Posterity! Holy and sacred stay of the unhappy and the oppressed; thou who art just, thou who art incorruptible, thou who findest the good man, who unmaskest the hypocrite, who breakest down the tyrant, may thy sure faith, thy consoling faith never, never abandon me!”
Denis Diderot (1713–1784) said by 1784 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in "Diderot" in The Great Infidels (1881) by Robert Green Ingersoll; The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll Vol. III (1900), p. 367
“I am beginning to feel that I am growing old; soon, I shall have to eat mush like children. I shall no longer be able to speak, which will be a rather great advantage for others and but a small inconvenience for myself.... The time in which I count in years is gone; that in which I count in days is here.... I had thought that the fibers of the heart would grow callous with age, it's not at all the case. I am not sure that my sensitivity hasn't increased; everything moves me, affects me.... To fade out between a man feeling your pulse and another bothering your head; not to know where one comes from, why one came, where one is going ...”
Denis Diderot (1713–1784) said by 1784 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to his sister Denise, as quoted in Diderot, Reason and Resonance (1982) by Élisabeth de Fontenay, pp. 270–271
“We do not know nature; causes hidden in her breast might have produced everything. In your turn, observe the polyp of Trembley: does it not contain in itself the causes which bring about regeneration? Why then would it be absurd to think that there are physical causes by reason of which everything has been made, and to which the whole chain of this vast universe is so necessarily bound and held that, nothing which happens, could have failed to happen,—causes, of which we are so invincibly ignorant that we have had recourse to a God, who, as some aver, is not so much as a logical entity? Thus to destroy chance is not to prove the existence of a supreme being, since there may be some other thing which is neither chance nor God—I mean, nature. It follows that the study of nature can make only unbelievers; and the way of thinking of all its more successful investigators proves this.”
Denis Diderot (1713–1784) first seen 1747 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted by Julien Offray de La Mettrie, Man a Machine (1747) Tr. Gertrude Carman Bussey (1912)
“Reason is to the philosopher what grace is to the Christian. Grace causes the Christian to act, reason the philosopher. Other men are carried away by their passions, their actions not being preceded by reflection: these are the men who walk in darkness. On the other hand, the philosopher, even in his passions, acts only after reflection; he walks in the dark, but by a torch. The philosopher forms his principles from an infinity of particular observations. Most people adopt principles without thinking of the observations that have produced them, they believe the maxims exist, so to speak, by themselves. But the philosopher takes maxims from their source; he examines their origin; he knows their proper value, and he makes use of them only in so far as they suit him. Truth is not for the philosopher a mistress who corrupts his imagination and whom he believes to be found everywhere; he contents himself with being able to unravel it where he can perceive it. He does not confound it with probability; he takes for true what is true, for false what is false, for doubtful what is doubtful, and probable what is only probable. He does more, and here you have a great perfection of the philosopher: when he has no reason by which to judge, he knows how to live in suspension of judgment... The philosophical spirit is, then, a spirit of observation and exactness, which relates everything to true principles...”
Denis Diderot (1713–1784) said by 1784 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Article on Philosophy, Vol. 25, p. 667, as quoted in Main Currents of Western Thought : Readings in Western European Intellectual History from the Middle Ages to the Present (1978) by Franklin Le Van Baumer
“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. Those who have money will display it in every imaginable way. If their ostentation does not exceed their fortune, all will be well. But if their ostentation does exceed their fortune they will ruin themselves. In such a country, the greatest fortunes will vanish in the twinkling of an eye. Those who don't have money will ruin themselves with vain efforts to conceal their poverty. That is one kind of affluence: the outward sign of wealth for a small number, the mask of poverty for the majority, and a source of corruption for all.”
Denis Diderot (1713–1784) said by 1784 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source