Denis Diderot quotes

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

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.

There is only one passion, the passion for happiness.

There are three principal means of acquiring knowledge... observation of nature, reflection, and experimentation. Observation collects facts; reflection combines them; experimentation verifies the result of that combination.

If there is one realm in which it is essential to be sublime, it is in wickedness. You spit on a petty thief, but you can't deny a kind of respect for the great criminal.

When superstition is allowed to perform the task of old age in dulling the human temperament, we can say goodbye to all excellence in poetry, in painting, and in music.

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.

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

Genius is present in every age, but the men carrying it within them remain benumbed unless extraordinary events occur to heat up and melt the mass so that it flows forth.

It is not human nature we should accuse but the despicable conventions that pervert it.

Patriotism is an ephemeral motive that scarcely ever outlasts the particular threat to society that aroused it.

Morals are in all countries the result of legislation and government; they are not African or Asian or European: they are good or bad.

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

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

You have to make it happen.

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

When science, art, literature, and philosophy are simply the manifestation of personality they are on a level where glorious and dazzling achievements are possible, which can make a man's name live for thousands of years.

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.

The possibility of divorce renders both marriage partners stricter in their observance of the duties they owe to each other. Divorces help to improve morals and to increase the population.