Denis Diderot Quotes
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There is no moral precept that does not have something inconvenient about it.
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To prove the Gospels by a miracle is to prove an absurdity by something contrary to nature.
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La puissance qui s'acquiert par la violence n'est qu'une usurpation, et ne dure qu'autant que la force de celui qui commande l'emporte sur celle de ceux qui obéissent.
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When one compares the talents one has with those of a Leibniz, one is tempted to throw away one's books and go die quietly in the dark of some forgotten corner.
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The first promise exchanged by two beings of flesh was at the foot of a rock that was crumbling into dust; they took as witness for their constancy a sky that is not the same for a single instant; everything changed in them and around them, and they believed their hearts free of vicissitudes. O children! always children!
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To attempt the destruction of our passions is the height of folly. What a noble aim is that of the zealot who tortures himself like a madman in order to desire nothing, love nothing, feel nothing, and who, if he succeeded, would end up a complete monster!
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One declaims endlessly against the passions; one imputes all of man's suffering to them. One forgets that they are also the source of all his pleasures.
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If your little savage were left to himself and be allowed to retain all his ignorance, he would in time join the infant’s reasoning to the grown man’s passion, he would strangle his father and sleep with his mother.
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If exclusive privileges were not granted, and if the financial system would not tend to concentrate wealth, there would be few great fortunes and no quick wealth. When the means of growing rich is divided between a greater number of citizens, wealth will also be more evenly distributed; extreme poverty and extreme wealth would be also rare.
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The wisest among us is very lucky never to have met the woman, be she beautiful or ugly, intelligent or stupid, who could drive him crazy enough to be fit to be put into an asylum.
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The world is the house of the strong. I shall not know until the end what I have lost or won in this place, in this vast gambling den where I have spent more than sixty years, dicebox in hand, shaking the dice.
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Are we not madder than those first inhabitants of the plain of Sennar? We know that the distance separating the earth from the sky is infinite, and yet we do not stop building our tower.
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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.
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Je m’entretiens avec moi-même de politique, d’amour, de goût ou de philosophie ; j’abandonne mon esprit à tout son libertinage ; je le laisse maître de suivre la première idée sage ou folle qui se présente … Mes pensées ce sont mes catins.
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The blood of Jesus Christ can cover a multitude of sins, it seems to me.
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It has been said that love robs those who have it of their wit, and gives it to those who have none.
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I have often seen an actor laugh off the stage, but I don’t remember ever having seen one weep.
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What a hell of an economic system! Some are replete with everything while others, whose stomachs are no less demanding, whose hunger is just as recurrent, have nothing to bite on. The worst of it is the constrained posture need puts you in. The needy man does not walk like the rest; he skips, slithers, twists, crawls.
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Il y a un peu de testicule au fond de nos sentiments les plus sublimes et de notre tendresse la plus épurée.
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Et ses mains ourdiraient les entrailles du prêtre, Au défaut d’un cordon pour étrangler les rois.