Denis Diderot Quotes - Page 2

There is no true sovereign except the nation; there can be no true legislator except the people.

My friend, you should blow out your candle in order to find your way more clearly.

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

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

Gratitude is a burden, and every burden is made to be shaken off.

Scepticism is the first step toward truth.

Doctors are always working to preserve our health and cooks to destroy it, but the latter are the more often successful.

To describe women, the pen should be dipped in the humid colors of the rainbow, and the paper dried with the dust gathered from the wings of a butterfly.

In general, children, like men, and men, like children, prefer entertainment to education.

Does anyone really know where they're going to?

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.

There is no good father who would want to resemble our Heavenly Father.

Wandering in a vast forest at night, I have only a faint light to guide me. A stranger appears and says to me: 'My friend, you should blow out your candle in order to find your way more clearly.' This stranger is a theologian.

The bad gives rise to the good, the good inspires the better, the better produces the excellent, the excellent is followed by the bizarre

A nation which thinks that it is belief in God and not good law which makes people honest does not seem to me very advanced.

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.

Poetry must have something in it that is barbaric, vast and wild.

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.

I discuss with myself questions of politics, love, taste, or philosophy. I let my mind rove wantonly, give it free rein to followany idea, wise or mad that may present itself. My ideas are my harlots.

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

The man who first pronounced the barbarous word God ought to have been immediately destroyed.

If there are one hundred thousand damned souls for one saved soul, the devil has always the advantage without having given up his son to death.

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.

The best mannered people make the most absurd lovers.

My ideas are my whores.