Diderot Quotes

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]

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

From fanaticism to barbarism is only one step.

In fact, the tendency for one purchase to lead to another one has a name: the Diderot Effect. The Diderot Effect states that obtaining a new possession often creates a spiral of consumption

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.

The first step towards philosophy is incredulity.

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

It is foolish to run risk of going mad for vanity's sake.

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.

Your favourite virtue ... Simplicity Your favourite virtue in man ... Strength Your favourite virtue in woman ... Weakness Your chief characteristic ... Singleness of purpose Your idea of happiness ... To fight Your idea of misery ... Submission The vice you excuse most ... Gullibility The vice you detest most ... Servility Your aversion ... Martin Tupper Favourite occupation ... Book-worming Favourite poet ... Shakespeare, Aeschylus, Goethe Favourite prose-writer ... Diderot Favourite hero ... Spartacus, Kepler Favourite heroine ... Gretchen [Heroine of Goethe's Faust] Favourite flower ... Daphne Favourite colour ... Red Favourite name ... Laura, Jenny Favourite dish ... Fish Favourite maxim ... Nihil humani a me alienum puto [Nothing human is alien to me] Favourite motto ... De omnibus dubitandum [Everything must be doubted].

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.

I admire the Queen greatly,” Casanova confided in me. “She can tie a man up by his thumbs, discuss philosophy with Diderot and Voltaire, and plot and scheme like a Dutch diplomat. She has voracious appetites, uses exquisite French scents, is kind to animals, fences like a Hungarian hussar, recreates herself on a white silk swing in a room full of mirrors, and gives afternoon tea parties for society ladies. Useful horsewoman, too.

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.

I wanted it so much. So much sometimes it felt like I couldn't breathe. Sometimes I would cry, not because I was sad, but because it hurt, physical pain from the intensity of wanting something so much. I'm a good student of philosophy, I know my Stoics, Cynics, their advice, that, when a desire is so intense it hurts you, the healthy path is to detach, unwant it, let it go. The healthy thing for the self. But there are a lot of reasons one can want to be an author: acclaim, wealth, self-respect, finding a community, the finite immortality of name in print, so many more. But I wanted it to add my voice to the Great Conversation, to reply to Diderot, Voltaire, Osamu Tezuka, and Alfred Bester, so people would read my books and think new things, and make new things from those thoughts, my little contribution to the path which flows from Gilgamesh and Homer to the stars. And that isn't just for me. It's for you. Which means it was the right choice to hang on to the desire, even when it hurt so much.

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!

These Diderots and d'Alemberts and Voltaires and Rousseaus or whatever names these scribblers have - there are even clerics among them and gentleman of noble birth! - they've finally managed to infect the whole society with their perfidious fidgets, with their sheer delight in discontent and their unwillingness to be satisfied with anything in this world, in short, with the boundless chaos that reigns inside their own heads!

Leader of a backward and ignorant mass, he was yet in the forefront of the great historical movement of his time. The blacks were taking their part in the destruction of European feudalism begun by the French Revolution, and liberty and equality, the slogans of the revolution, meant far more to them than to any Frenchman. That was why in the hour of danger Toussaint, uninstructed as he was, could find the language and accent of Diderot, Rousseau, and Raynal, of Mirabeau, Robespierre and Danton. And in one respect he excelled them all. For even these masters of the spoken and written word, owing to the class complications of their society, too often had to pause, to hesitate, to qualify. Toussaint could defend the freedom of the blacks without reservation, and this gave to his declaration a strength and a single-mindedness rare in the great documents of the time. The French bourgeoisie could not understand it. Rivers of blood were to flow before they understood that elevated as was his tone Toussaint had written neither bombast nor rhetoric but the simple and sober truth.

(...) 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.

Our real opinion is not one in which we have never wavered, but the one to which we have most regularly returned.

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

...those who succeeded the Voltaires, the d'Alemberts, & the Diderots at the head of the movement when these giants died, & who inherited their social acclaim, had little new to say...These swarming hacks hoped, like the great heroes of the Enlightenment before them, to write their way to fame & fortune. They found fame & fortune already monopolized by second-rate socialites who did not even put pen to paper most of the time, & yet who had the power & prestige to censor & condemn their works out of hand.

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

What I wanted to tell you about Philidor was that Diderot wrote him a letter. You know Diderot?" "The French Revolution?" "Yeah. Philidor was doing blindfold exhibitions and burning out his brain, or whatever it was they thought you did in the eighteenth century. Diderot wrote him: 'It is foolish to run the risk of going mad for vanity's sake.' I think of that sometimes when I'm analyzing my ass over a chessboard.

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.

In a passage penned for the Abbé Raynal’s Histoire philosophique des deux Indes, lines written shortly after the Revolution’s onset in 1776, Diderot, confident that they would succeed, urges the insurgents to remember in building their new world not to allow inequality of wealth to become too great. He admonished them to “fear a too unequal division of wealth resulting in a small number of opulent citizens and a multitude of citizens living in misery, from which there arises the arrogance of the one and the abasement of the other.”13

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

Tell us about de Sade. You take him seriously as a thinker? A. You must. He is important. He represents the line from the Enlightenment philosophers who extol human reason and free will, in its cynical vein. He asks, If we are free to follow our passions, who can prevent us from following our desire to hurt others, to kill, to rape, to torture? Those are, he says, human passions; they are natural. Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot, the freethinkers, lead, according to one view, to the guillotine and the Sadeian boudoir. Mr. Mason has understood this. He has shown it.

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.

The thought of [our] destruction is like a light in the middle of the night that spreads its flames on the objects it will soon consume. We must get used to contemplating this light, since it announces nothing that has not been prepared by all that comes before; and since death is as natural as life, why should be so afraid of it?

Now Christianity proposes a completely different account of how history comes to a climax and what precisely constitutes the new order of the ages—which helps to explain why so many of modernity’s avatars, from Diderot to Christopher Hitchens, have specially targeted Christianity. On the Christian reading, history reached its highpoint when a young first-century Jewish rabbi, having been put to death on a brutal Roman instrument of torture, was raised from the dead through the power of the God of Israel. The state-sponsored murder of Jesus, who had dared to speak and act in the name of Israel’s God, represented the world’s resistance to the Creator. It was the moment when cruelty, hatred, violence, and corruption—symbolized in the Bible as the watery chaos—spent itself on Jesus. The resurrection, therefore, showed forth the victory of the divine love over those dark powers. St. Paul can say, “I am certain that neither death nor life, neither angels nor principalities, nor any other creature can separate us from the love of God,” precisely because he lived on the far side of the resurrection.

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.

The finger of the atheists' own divinity, Reason, wrote on the wall the appalling judgments that there is no God; that the universe is only matter in spontaneous motion; and, most grievous word of all, that what men call their souls die with the death of the body, as music dies when the strings are broken.

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.

From Bacon, Diderot learned that science need not bow down before a Bible-based view of the world; it should be based on induction and experimentation, and, ideally, used to further humankind’s mastery of nature. Locke delivered two related concepts. The first was a theory of mind that rejected the long-standing belief that humans were born with innate ideas (and, therefore, with an inborn understanding of the divine). In Locke’s view, the mind is a blank slate at birth, and our understanding of the exterior world comes about solely through sensation and reflection. This entirely nonspiritual view of cognition set up a second critical lesson. Since, according to the English philosopher, true knowledge is limited to what we can learn through our senses, anyone involved in seeking out nature’s secrets must rely on observation and experiment — on a so-called empirical approach — and avoid building huge systems based on fantasy.

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.

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?

ED ABBEY’S FBI file was a thick one, and makes for engrossing reading. The file begins in 1947, when Abbey, just twenty and freshly back from serving in the Army in Europe, posts a typewritten notice on the bulletin board at the State Teachers College in Pennsylvania. The note urges young men to send their draft cards to the president in protest of peacetime conscription, exhorting them to “emancipate themselves.” It is at that point that Abbey becomes “the subject of a Communist index card” at the FBI, and from then until the end of his life the Bureau will keep track of where Abbey is residing, following his many moves. They will note when he heads west and, as acting editor of the University of New Mexico’s literary magazine, The Thunderbird, decides to print an issue with a cover emblazoned with the words: “Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest!” The quote is from Diderot, but Abbey thinks it funnier to attribute the words to Louisa May Alcott. And so he quickly loses his editorship while the FBI adds a few more pages to his file. The Bureau will become particularly intrigued when Mr. Abbey attends an international conference in defense of children in Vienna, Austria, since the conference, according to the FBI, was “initiated by Communists in 1952.” Also quoted in full in his files is a letter to the editor that he sends to the New Mexico Daily Lobo, in which he writes: “In this day of the cold war, which everyday [sic] shows signs of becoming warmer, the individual who finds himself opposed to war is apt to feel very much out of step with his fellow citizens” and then announces the need to form a group to “discuss implications and possibilities of resistance to war.

Nessun limite a Parigi. Nessuna città ha avuto questa dominazione che dileggiava talvolta coloro ch'essa soggioga: Piacervi o ateniesi! esclamava Alessandro. Parigi fa più che la legge, fa la moda; e più che la moda, l'abitudine. Se le piace, può esser stupida, e talvolta si concede questo lusso, allora l'universo è stupido con lei. Poi Parigi si sveglia, si frega gli occhi e dice: «Come sono sciocca!» e sbotta a ridere in faccia al genere umano. Quale meraviglia, una simile città! Quanto è strano che questo grandioso e questo burlesco si faccian buona compagnia, che tutta questa maestà non sia turbata da tutta questa parodia e che la stessa bocca possa oggi soffiare nella tromba del giudizio finale e domani nello zufolo campestre! Parigi ha una giocondità suprema: la sua allegrezza folgora e la sua farsa regge uno scettro. Il suo uragano esce talvolta da una smorfia; le sue esplosioni, le sue giornate, i suoi capolavori, i suoi prodigi e le sue epopee giungono fino in capo al mondo, e i suoi spropositi anche. La sua risata è una bocca di vulcano che inzacchera tutta la terra, i suoi lazzi sono faville; essa impone ai popoli le sue caricature, così come il suo ideale, ed i più alti monumenti della civiltà umana ne accettano le ironie e prestano la loro eternità alle sue monellerie. È superba: ha un 14 luglio prodigioso, che libera l'universo; fa fare il giuramento della palla corda a tutte le nazioni; la sua notte del 4 agosto dissolve in tre ore mille anni di feudalismo; fa della sua logica il muscolo della volontà unanime; si moltiplica sotto tutte le forme del sublime; riempie del suo bagliore Washington, Kosciusko, Bolivar, Botzaris, Riego, Bem, Manin, Lopez, John Brown, Garibaldi; è dappertutto dove s'accende l'avvenire, a Boston nel 1779, all'isola di Leon nel 1820, a Budapest nel 1848, a Palermo nel 1860; sussurra la possente parola d'ordine: Libertà, all'orecchio degli abolizionisti americani radunati al traghetto di Harper's Ferry ed all'orecchio dei patrioti d'Ancona, riuniti nell'ombra degli Archi, davanti all'albergo Gozzi, in riva al mare; crea Canaris, Quiroga, Pisacane; irraggia la grandezza sulla terra; e Byron muore a Missolungi e Mazet muore a Barcellona, andando là dove il suo alito li spinge; è tribuna sotto i piedi di Mirabeau, cratere sotto i piedi di Robespierre; i suoi libri, il suo teatro, la sua arte, la sua scienza, la sua letteratura, la sua filosofia sono i manuali del genere umano; vi sono Pascal, Régnier, Corneille, Descartes, Gian Giacomo; Voltaire per tutti i minuti, Molière per tutti i secoli; fa parlar la sua lingua alla bocca universale e questa lingua diventa il Verbo; costruisce in tutte le menti l'idea del progresso; i dogmi liberatori da lei formulati sono per le generazioni altrettanti cavalli di battaglia, e appunto coll'anima dei suoi pensatori e dei suoi poeti si sono fatti dal 1789 in poi gli eroi di tutti i popoli. Il che non le impedisce d'esser birichina; e quel genio enorme che si chiama Parigi, mentre trasfigura il mondo colla sua luce, disegna col carboncino il naso di Bourginier sul muro del tempio di Teseo e scrive Crédeville, ladro, sulle piramidi. Parigi mostra sempre i denti; quando non brontola, ride. Siffatta è questa Parigi. I fumacchi dei suoi tetti sono le idee dell'universo. Mucchio di fango e di pietre, se si vuole; ma, soprattutto, essere morale: è più che grande, è immensa. Perché? Perché osa. Osare: il più progresso si ottiene a questo prezzo. Tutte le conquiste sublimi sono, più o meno, premî al coraggio, perché la rivoluzione sia, non basta che Montesquieu la presagisca, che Diderot la predichi, che Beaumarchais l'annunci, che Condorcet la calcoli, che Arouet la prepari e che Rousseau la premediti: bisogna che Danton l'osi.