Quotes from Denis Diderot

If it became customary to go out into the street stark naked I should not be the first nor the last to conform.

Ne pourrait?on pas dire que toutes les religions du monde ne sont que des sectes de la religion naturelle, et que les juifs, les chrétiens, les musulmans, les païens même ne sont que des naturalistes hérétiques et schismatiques ?

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

Nada hay tan difícil de perdonar como el mérito.

Nous aimons, sans nous en douter, tout ce qui nous livre à nos penchants, nous séduit et excuse notre faiblesse.

If one of them appears in company, he's a grain of yeast which ferments and gives back to everyone some part of his natural individuality. He shakes things up. He agitates us.

Scepticismul este primul pas spre adev?r.

Tout a son vrai loyer dans ce monde. Il y a deux procureurs généraux, l'un à votre porte qui châtie les délits contre la société; la nature est l'autre. Celle-ci connaît de tous les vices qui échappent aux lois.

The best order of things, to my way of thinking, is the one I was meant to be part of, and to hell with the most perfect of worlds if I am not of it.

c'est la magie de la constance, la plus difficile et la plus rare de nos vertus.

Il (l'homme) ne te donnera jamais que ce qui ne lui est bon à rien, et te demandera toujours ce qui lui est utile.

Monsieur me prépare le plus triste avenir; que deviendrai-je quand je n'aurai plus rien à dire? - Tu recommenceras. - Jacques, recommencer! Le contraire est écrit là-haut; et s'il m'arrivait de recommencer, je ne pourrais m'empêcher de m'écrier: Ah! si ton grand-père t'entendait!... et je regretterais le bâillon.

Ce qu'on n'a jamais mis en question n'a point été prouvé.

When we know to read our own hearts, we acquire wisdom of the hearts of others.

no courage in the world can hold out in the face of neglect, solitude and persecution.

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.

What does one say to somebody who says: 'Whatever the sum total of the elements I am composed of I am still one entity. Now one cause has only one effect. I have always been one single cause and I have therefore only ever had one effect to produce. My existence in time is therefore nothing more than a series of necessary effects'?

Now look, my friend, if you come to think it out you will find that in all things our real opinion is not the one from which we have never wavered, but the one to which we have most regularly returned.

You are going to say that I am amusing myself and that because I do not know what to do with my two travellers any more, I am throwing myself into allegory, which is the usual recourse of sterile minds.

If we love truth more than the fine arts, let us pray to God for some iconoclasts.

But how do you know that the whole world hasn't its meninges, or that there isn't a big or little spider living in some corner of space with threads extending everywhere?

Tell me how it is that whoever wrote out the great scroll could have decreed that such would be the reward of a noble act? Why should I, who am merely a miserable compound of faults, take your defence while He calmly watched you being attacked, knocked down, manhandled and trampled underfoot, He who is supposed to be the embodiment of all perfection?

Even if Aristotle was not an atheist in the sense that he directly and openly attacked the divine . . . one could say that he was one in a broader sense, because his ideas on divinity indirectly tend to undermine it and destroy it.

Au fost l?udaÅ£i mult mai mult oamenii ocupaÅ£i a ne face s? credem c? suntem fericiÅ£i, decât oamenii ocupaÅ£i a ne face s? fim fericiÅ£i cu adev?rat. Ce ciud??enie în judec??ile noastre! Pretindem ca fiecare s? fac? ceva folositor, dar îi dispreÅ£uim pe oamenii folositori.