Quotes from Denis Diderot

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

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

Virtue is praised, but hated. People run from it, for it is ice-cold and in this world you have to keep your feet warm.

Morals are in all countries the result of legislation and government they are not African or Asian or European: they are good or bad.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

All children are essentially criminal.

Fanaticism is just one step away from barbarism.

Gaiety --a quality of ordinary men. Genius always presupposes some disorder in the machine.

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.

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.

The following general definition of an animal: a system of different organic molecules that have combined with one another, under the impulsion of a sensation similar to an obtuse and muffled sense of touch given to them by the creator of matter as a whole, until each one of them has found the most suitable position for its shape and comfort.

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.

To place patients of different illnesses in the same ward is to use people to kill each other. approx quote, possibly on L Hotel Dieu in Paris.

Virtue is praised but hated. People run away from it, for it is ice-cold and in this world you must keep your feet warm.

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

What has not been examined impartially has not been well examined. Skepticism is therefore the first step toward truth.