Quotes from Denis Diderot

A thing is not proved because no one has ever questioned it... Skepticism is the first step toward truth.

One may demand of me that I should seek truth, but not that I should find it

If ever anybody dedicated his whole life to the "enthusiasm for truth and justice" using this phrase in the good sense it was Diderot.

And his hands would plait the priest's entrails, For want of a rope, to strangle kings.

Distance is a great promoter of admiration!

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

Only a very bad theologian would confuse the certainty that follows revelation with the truths that are revealed. They are entirely different things.

Evil always turns up in this world through some genius or other.

From fanaticism to barbarism is only one step.

You have to make it happen.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

There is no kind of harassment that a man may not inflict on a woman with impunity in civilized societies.

He whom we call a gentleman is no longer the man of Nature.

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

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

The pit of a theatre is the one place where the tears of virtuous and wicked men alike are mingled.

Posterity for the philosopher is what the other world is for the religious man.

We are constantly railing against the passions; we ascribe to them all of man's afflictions, and we forget that they are also the source of all his pleasures.

The infant runs toward it with its eyes closed, the adult is stationary, the old man approaches it with his back turned.