Quotes by Denis Diderot

“No man has received from nature the right to give orders to others. Freedom is a gift from heaven, and every individual of the same species has the right to enjoy it as soon as he is in enjoyment of his reason.”

“A lie has speed, but truth has endurance.”

“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.”

“It is very important not to mistake hemlock for parsley, but to believe or not believe in God is not important at all”

“In any country where talent and virtue produce no advancement, money will be the national god. Its inhabitants will either have to possess money or make others believe that they do. Wealth will be the highest virtue, poverty the greatest vice. Those who have money will display it in every imaginable way. If their ostentation does not exceed their fortune, all will be well. But if their ostentation does exceed their fortune they will ruin themselves. In such a country, the greatest fortunes will vanish in the twinkling of an eye. Those who dont have money will ruin themselves with vain efforts to conceal their poverty. That is one kind of affluence: the outward sign of wealth for a small number, the mask of poverty for the majority, and a source of corruption for all.”

How had they met? By chance, like everybody else. What were there names? Whats it to you? Where were they coming from? From the nearest place. Where were they going? Does anyone really know where theyre going?

Scepticism is the first step towards truth.

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

All things must be examined, debated, investigated without exception and without regard for anyones feelings.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

People stop thinking when they cease to read.

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

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

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.