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Denis Diderot: 212 quotes19 likes

“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.”

Denis Diderot

Observations on the Drawing Up of Laws (1774)

“The pit of a theatre is the one place where the tears of virtuous and wicked men alike are mingled.”

Denis Diderot

On Dramatic Poetry (1758)

“When shall we see poets born? After a time of disasters and great misfortunes, when harrowed nations begin to breathe again. And then, shaken by the terror of such spectacles, imaginations will paint things entirely strange to those who have not witnessed them.”

Denis Diderot

On Dramatic Poetry (1758)

“We do not know nature; causes hidden in her breast might have produced everything. In your turn, observe the polyp of Trembley: does it not contain in itself the causes which bring about regeneration? Why then would it be absurd to think that there are physical causes by reason of which everything has been made, and to which the whole chain of this vast universe is so necessarily bound and held that, nothing which happens, could have failed to happen,—causes, of which we are so invincibly ignorant that we have had recourse to a God, who, as some aver, is not so much as a logical entity? Thus to destroy chance is not to prove the existence of a supreme being, since there may be some other thing which is neither chance nor God—I mean, nature. It follows that the study of nature can make only unbelievers; and the way of thinking of all its more successful investigators proves this.”

Denis Diderot

As quoted by Julien Offray de La Mettrie, Man a Machine (1747) Tr. Gertrude Carman Bussey https://books.google.com/books?id=GKYLAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA125 (1912) <br class="br">Pensées Philosophiques (1746)

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

Denis Diderot

As quoted in Cracking the Code of Our Physical Universe : The Key to a Whole New World of Enlightenment and Enrichment (2006) by Matthew M Radmanesh, p. 91

“The good of the people must be the great purpose of government. By the laws of nature and of reason, the governors are invested with power to that end. And the greatest good of the people is liberty. It is to the state what health is to the individual.”

Denis Diderot

Article on Government
L'Encyclopédie (1751-1766)

“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.”

Denis Diderot

“Conversation Between D’Alembert and Diderot”
D’Alembert’s Dream (1769)

“The God of the Christians is a father who makes much of his apples, and very little of his children.”

Denis Diderot

No. 16
Pensées Philosophiques (1746)

“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.”

Denis Diderot book Rameau's Nephew

Rameau's Nephew (1762)

“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.”

Denis Diderot

Aucun homme n'a recu de la nature le droit de commander aux autres. La liberté est un présent du ciel, et chaque individu de la meme espèce a le droit d'en jouir aussitòt qu'il jouit de la raison.
Article on Political Authority, Vol. 1, (1751) as quoted in Selected Writings (1966) edited by Lester G. Crocker
Variant translation: No man has received from nature the right to command his fellow human beings.
L'Encyclopédie (1751-1766)

“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.”

Denis Diderot

Conversations with a Christian Lady (1774)

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

Denis Diderot

As quoted in A Dictionary of Thoughts : Being a Cyclopedia of Laconic Quotations (1908) by Tryon Edwards, p. 338

“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.”

Denis Diderot

Source: Pensées Philosophiques (1746), Ch. 3, as quoted in Selected Writings (1966) edited by Lester G. Crocker

“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.”

Denis Diderot book Rameau's Nephew

Rameau's Nephew (1762)

“There is no good father who would want to resemble our Heavenly Father”

Denis Diderot

No. 51
Pensées Philosophiques (1746)

“There is not a Musselman alive who would not imagine that he was performing an action pleasing to God and his Holy Prophet by exterminating every Christian on earth, while the Christians are scarcely more tolerant on their side.”

Denis Diderot

Conversations with a Christian Lady (1774)

“I am beginning to feel that I am growing old; soon, I shall have to eat mush like children. I shall no longer be able to speak, which will be a rather great advantage for others and but a small inconvenience for myself. … The time in which I count in years is gone; that in which I count in days is here. … I had thought that the fibers of the heart would grow callous with age, it's not at all the case. I am not sure that my sensitivity hasn't increased; everything moves me, affects me. … To fade out between a man feeling your pulse and another bothering your head; not to know where one comes from, why one came, where one is going …”

Denis Diderot

Letter to his sister Denise, as quoted in Diderot, Reason and Resonance (1982) by Élisabeth de Fontenay, pp. 270–271

“Shakespeare’s fault is not the greatest into which a poet may fall. It merely indicates a deficiency of taste.”

Denis Diderot

On Dramatic Poetry (1758)

“This is a work that cannot be completed except by a society of men of letters and skilled workmen, each working separately on his own part, but all bound together solely by their zeal for the best interests of the human race and a feeling of mutual good will.”

Denis Diderot

Article on Encyclopedia, as translated in The Many Faces of Philosophy : Reflections from Plato to Arendt (2001), "Diderot", p. 237
L'Encyclopédie (1751-1766)

“Although a man may wear fine clothing, if he lives peacefully; and is good, self-possessed, has faith and is pure; and if he does not hurt any living being, he is a holy man.”

Denis Diderot

Gautama Buddha, as quoted in the Dhammapada.
Misattributed