Denis Diderot Quotes

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

I have observed, indeed, generally, that while in protestant countries the defections from the Platonic Christianity of the priests is to Deism, in catholic countries they are to Atheism. Diderot, D'Alembert, D’Holbach, Condorcet, are known to have been among the most virtuous of men. Their virtue, then, must have had some other foundation than the love of God. [Letter to Thomas Law, 13 June 1814]

From fanaticism to barbarism is only one step.

All things must be examined, debated, investigated without exception and without regard for anyone's feelings.

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

[L]e philosophe n'a jamais tué de prêtres et le prêtre a tué beaucoup de philosophes... (The philosopher has never killed any priests, whereas the priest has killed a great many philosophers.)

Scepticism is the first step towards truth.

Happiest are the people who give most happiness to others

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.

Life is but a series of misunderstandings.

For me, my thoughts are my prostitutes.

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

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

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

I am wholly yours - you are everything to me; we will sustain each other in all the ills of life it may please fate to inflict upon us; you will soothe my troubles; I will comfort you in yours.

There is no moral precept that does not have something inconvenient about it.

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

What is a monster? A being whose survival is incompatible with the existing order.

People stop thinking when they cease to read.

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

حقیقی‌ترین تاریخ پر از اباطیل است و تخیلی‌ترین رمان پر از حقایق

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

The best order of things, as I see it, is the one that includes me; to hell with the most perfect of worlds, if I'm not part of it.

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

As long as the centuries continue to unfold, the number of books will grow continually, and one can predict that a time will come when it will be almost as difficult to learn anything from books as from the direct study of the whole universe. It will be almost as convenient to search for some bit of truth concealed in nature as it will be to find it hidden away in an immense multitude of bound volumes.

It is better to reveal a weakness than allow oneself be suspected of a vice.

The fact is that she was terribly undressed and I was extremely undressed too. The fact is that I still had my hand where she didn't have anything and she had hers where the same wasn't quite true of me. The fact is that I found myself underneath her and consequently she found herself on top of me.

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.

It is very important not to mistake hemlock for parsley; but not at all so to believe or not in God.

Monsignor…you are asking whether I promise God chastity, poverty, and obedience. I heard what you said and my answer is no

Nothing is duller than a progression of common chords. One wants some contrast, which breaks up the clear white light and makes it iridescent.

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

No matter how much a man may study, reflect and meditate on all the books in the world, he is nothing more than a minor scribe unless he has read the great book.

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.

El pueblo, eterno esclavo de los tiranos que lo oprimen, de los bribones que lo engañan y de los bufones que lo divierten.

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

Mind what you do; if you deceive me once I shall never believe you again.

Our truest opinions are not those we never change, but those to which we most often return.

I give my mind the liberty to follow the first wise or foolish idea that presents itself, just as in the avenue de Foy our dissolute youths follow close on the heels of some strumpet, then leave her to pursue another, attacking all of them and attaching themselves to none. My thoughts are my strumpets.

Rendre la vertu aimable, le vice odieux, le ridicule saillant. Voilà le projet de tout homme qui prend la plume, le pinceau et le ciseau.

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.

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

In order to shake a hypothesis, it is sometimes not necessary to do anything more than push it as far as it will go.

Pithy sentences are like sharp nails which force truth upon our memory.

There are two public prosecutors, and one of them is at your door, punishing crimes against society; the other is nature herself. She is familiar with all those vices that escape the law.

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.

Comment s’étaient-ils rencontrés ? Par hasard, comme tout le monde. Comment s’appelaient-ils ? Que vous importe ? D’où venaient-ils ? Du lieu le plus prochain. Où allaient-ils ? Est-ce que l’on sait où l’on va ?

- Prawda ma swoje strony uderzające, które się chwyta, gdy się ma talent. - Tak, gdy się ma talent. Ale gdy ktoś nie ma? - Gdy nie ma, nie powinien pisać.

Nie wiem, co to zasady, chyba że tak nazywamy prawidła, które przypisuje się innym, a nie sobie. Myślę tak, a nie umiałbym się powstrzymać od czynienia inaczej.

Se me debe exigir que busque la verdad, pero no que la encuentre.

Omul nu va fi liber până când ultimul rege va fi spânzurat cu intestinele ultimului preot.

To speak to you frankly, Reader, I find that you are the more wicked of the two of us. How satisfied would I be if it were as easy for me to protect myself from your calumny as it is for you to protect yourself from the boredom or the danger of my work!

(...) a ja nie lubię kłamstwa, chyba że jest użyteczne i nieodzowne.

Los lubi chodzić krętymi drogami. Obwiniamy go w pierwszej chwili, że skłamał, z czasem zaś okazuje się, że mówił prawdę.

Nie lubię mówić o żyjących; zawsze się człowiek musi rumienić za to, co o nich powie dobrego czy złego: dobrego, które popsują, złego, które naprawią.

Drogi panie, życie upływa na samych qui pro quo! Są qui pro quo miłości, qui pro quo przyjaźni, qui pro quo polityki, finansów, Kościoła, urzędu, handlu, żon, mężów...

Niczego równie trudno nie przebacza się komuś, co jego zalet.

Ludzie, którzy coś powtarzają dwa razy, to głupcy mający za głupców tych, którzy ich słuchają

How many wisely conceived projects have failed and will fail in the future! How many insane projects have succeeded and will succeed!

آدمی شربت دروغی را که در تملق او باشد یک جرعه می‌نوشد و حرف حق را که برایش تلخ است، قطره‌قطره. در ثانی، ما چاپلوسان قیافه‌مان حق به جانب و صادق است.

La superstition est plus injurieuse à Dieu que l'athéisme.

Master, master, you obviously haven’t thought about this at all. We only ever feel sorry for ourselves, believe me.

The enjoyment of freedom which could be exercised without any motivation would be the real hallmark of a maniac.

أليس شيئاً مزعجاً! فهم يذمّون الحياةَ من الصصبح حتى المساء، ولا يستطيعون عقد العزم على مغادرتها! أيكون السبب أن الحياة الراهنة ليست في مجملها بالشيء الرديء ، أم أنهم يخشون حياة قادمة أسوأ منها

Indeed, the purpose of an encyclopedia is to collect knowledge disseminated around the globe; to set forth its general system to the men with whom we live, and transmit it to those who will come after us, so that the work of preceding centuries will not become useless to the centuries to come; and so that our offspring, becoming better instructed, will at the same time become more virtuous and happy, and that we should not die without having rendered a service to the human race in the future years to come.

Because, without knowing what is written up above, none of us knows what we want or what we are doing, and we follow our whims which we call reason, or our reason which is often nothing but a dangerous whim which sometimes turns out well, sometimes badly.

Nikt bardziej nie lubi mówić niż jąkały, nikt bardziej nie lubi chodzić niż chromi.

Mis ideas son mis rameras

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

Un despote ne doit pas obtenir du crédit".

Si en este mundo no se dice casi nada que sea escuchado como debiera, hay algo mucho peor, y es que no se hace casi nada que sea juzgado tal y como se ha hecho.

And he added that prudence in no way assured us of success but consoled us and excused us in failure.

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.

كيف حاله؟ أفضل من الجميع . لقد مات!

أدركتُ أن قول الحقيقة وحدها لا يكفي ، بل ينبغي أيضاً أن يكون طريفا

إنّ أول عهد قطعه على نفسيهما كائنان اثنان من لحم ودم، كان قرب صخرة انهارت فذهبت هباءً منثوراً. وقد أشهدا على ثبات عهدهما سماء لم تثبت أي لحظة على حال

أنا ألهو بأن أكتب الحماقات التي ترتكبونها تحت أسماء مستعارة. فحماقاتكم تضحكني وكتاباتي تعكر مزاجكم

...qui siedo sempre come un maestoso cazzo fra duoi coglioni. [...I always sit here like a majestic prick between two balls.]

Хората престават да мислят, когато престанат да четат.

We are far more liable to catch the vices than the virtues of our associates.

Bizim kadar budala olmayanları akıllı saymayız.

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.

It was ordained that you would have the title to the thing and I would have the thing itself.

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

Scepticismul este primul pas spre adevăr.

Nada hay tan difícil de perdonar como el mérito.

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

You spit on a petty thief, but you can't withhold a sort of respect from a great criminal. His courage bowls you over. His brutality makes you shudder. What you value in everything is consistency of character.

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 ?

C'est que, faute de savoir ce qui est écrit là-haut, on ne sait ni ce qu'on veut ni ce qu'on fait, et qu'on suit sa fantaisie qu'on appelle raison, ou sa raison qui n'est souvent qu'une dangereuse fantaisie qui tourne tantôt bien, tantôt mal.

Are convents so essential to the constitution of a state? Did Jesus Christ institute monks and nuns? Can the Church really not do without them? What need has the bridegroom of so many foolish virgins, and what need has the human race of so many victims?

People of North America: may the example of all those nations that have preceded you, and especially that of your motherland, be your guide. Beware the abundance of gold that brings about the corruption of morals and the scorn of law; beware of an unbalanced distribution of wealth that will produce a small number of opulent citizens and a horde of citizens in poverty...

The first oath sworn by two creatures of flesh and blood was at the foot of a rock that was turning into dust. They called upon the heavens (which are never the same from one instant to the next) to witness their constancy. Although everything inside them and outside of them was changing, they believed their hearts to be immune to change. Oh children! You are still children…

With the growth of civilisation in Europe, and with the revival of letters and of science in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the ethical and intellectual criticism of theology once more recommenced, and arrived at a temporary resting-place in the confessions of the various reformed Protestant sects in the sixteenth century; almost all of which, as soon as they were strong enough, began to persecute those who carried criticism beyond their own limit. But the movement was not arrested by these ecclesiastical barriers, as their constructors fondly imagined it would be; it was continued, tacitly or openly, by Galileo, by Hobbes, by Descartes, and especially by Spinoza, in the seventeenth century; by the English Freethinkers, by Rousseau, by the French Encyclopaedists, and by the German Rationalists, among whom Lessing stands out a head and shoulders taller than the rest, throughout the eighteenth century; by the historians, the philologers, the Biblical critics, the geologists, and the biologists in the nineteenth century, until it is obvious to all who can see that the moral sense and the really scientific method of seeking for truth are once more predominating over false science. Once more ethics and theology are parting company.

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.

Those people who are buried next to each other are perhaps not as crazy as one might think. Their ashes might press and mix together, and unite. What do I know? Maybe they haven't lost all feeling or all the memories of their first state. Perhaps there is a flicker of heat that they both enjoy in their own way at the bottom of the cold urn that holds them. Oh, my Sophie, I could touch you, feel you, love you, look for you, unite myself with you, and combine myself with you when we are no longer here.. Allow me this fantasy.

There comes a moment when nearly all young girls and young boys become melancholic. They are disturbed by a vague uneasiness which extends to everything and can find no consolation. They look for solitude. They weep. The silence of the cloister moves them and the image of peace which seems to reign in religious houses seduces them. They mistake the first movements of their developing emotions for the voice of God calling them and it is at the precise moment when nature is calling to them that they embrace a life which is contrary to the laws of nature.

Comment s’étaient-ils rencontrés? Par hasard, comme tout le monde. Comment s’appelaient-ils? Que vous importe? D’où venaient-ils? Du lieu le plus prochain. Où allaient-ils? Est-ce que l’on sait où l’on va? Que disaient-ils? Le maître ne disait rien; et Jacques disait que son capitaine disait que tout ce qui nous arrive de bien et de mal ici-bas était écrit là-haut.

Manastirile sint ele oare atit de trebuincioase pentru temeliile unui stat? A facut Isus Cristos calugari si calugarite? [...] Ce nevoie are mirele sfint de atitea fecioare nebune? [...] e oare voia lui Dumnezeu sa vada traind in sihastrie omul pe care l-a menit sa traiasca laolalta cu semenii sai? Dumnezeu, care l-a facut atit de nestatornic, atit de usuratic, cum poate ingadui indrazneala legamintelor calugariei? [...] Si toate slujbele acestea lugubre, care se tin la luarea valului sau la marturie, cind un barbat sau o femeie sint daruiti vietii monahale si nenorocirii, curma oare functiunile animalice ale omului? Nu se trezesc ele, dimpotriva, in tacere, in silnicie si in trindavie, cu o putere necunoscuta celor ce traiesc in afara manastirilor?

As I listened to him describing the scene of the procurer seducing the young girl, I found myself torn between two conflicting emotions, between a powerful desire to laugh and an overwhelming surge of indignation. I was in agony. Again and again a roar of laughter prevented my rage bursting forth; again and again the rage rising in my heart became a roar of laughter. I was dumbfounded by such shrewdness and such depravity; by such soundness of ideas alternating with such falseness; by so general a perversity of feeling, so total a corruption, and so exceptional a candour. He saw how agitated I was. 'What's the matter?' he asked. ME: Nothing. HIM: I think you're upset. ME: Indeed I am. HIM: So what do you think I should do? ME: Talk about something else. What a wretched fate, to have been born and to have fallen so low! HIM: I agree. But don't let my state affect you too much. In opening my heart to you, it was not my intention to upset you. I've managed to save a little, while I was with those people. Remember I wanted for nothing, nothing whatsoever, and they also made me a small allowance for incidentals. [Here he began to strike himself on the forehead with his fist, bite his lips, and roll his eyes like a lunatic, then he said:] What's done is done. I've put a bit aside. Time's passed, so I'm that much to the good. ME: You mean to the bad. HIM: No, to the good. Live one day less, or have an ecu more, it's all the same. The important thing is to open your bowels easily, freely, enjoyably, copiously, every evening; 'o stercus pretiosum!' That's the grand outcome of life in every condition. At the final moment, we're all equally rich - Samuel Bernard who by dint of theft, pillage, and bankruptcy leaves twenty-seven millions in gold, and Rameau who'll leave nothing, Rameau for whom charity will provide the winding-sheet to wrap him in.