The voices / 38 fragments

Denis Diderot

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01Undated

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 / quote

02Undated

Scepticism is the first step towards truth.

Denis Diderot / quote

03Undated

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

Denis Diderot / quote

04Undated

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

Denis Diderot / quote

05Undated

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

Denis Diderot / quote

06Undated

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 / quote

07Undated

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

Denis Diderot / quote

08Undated

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

Denis Diderot / quote

09Undated

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 / quote

10Undated

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

Denis Diderot / quote

11Undated

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 / quote

12Undated

People stop thinking when they cease to read.

Denis Diderot / quote

13Undated

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

Denis Diderot / quote

14Undated

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

Denis Diderot / quote

15Undated

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 / quote

16Undated

Distance is a great promoter of admiration!

Denis Diderot / quote

17Undated

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

Denis Diderot / quote

18Undated

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.

Denis Diderot / quote

19Undated

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

Denis Diderot / quote

20Undated

You risk just as much in being credulous as in being suspicious.

Denis Diderot / quote

21Undated

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 / quote

22Undated

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 / quote

23Undated

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

Denis Diderot / quote

24Undated

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 / quote