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Denis Diderot Quotes
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Denis Diderot was a French philosopher, art critic, and writer. He was a prominent figure during the Enlightenment and is best known for serving as co-founder, chief editor, and contributor to the Encyclopédie along with Jean le Rond d'Alembert.

Diderot's literary reputation during his lifetime rested primarily on his plays and his contributions to the Encyclopédie; many of his most important works, including Jacques the Fatalist, Rameau's Nephew, Paradox of the Actor, and D'Alembert's Dream, were published only after his death.

✵ 5. October 1713 – 31. July 1784
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Denis Diderot: 106   quotes 19   likes

Denis Diderot Quotes

“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)
Pensées Philosophiques (1746)

God , Way , Nature , Thinking

“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

Change , Time

“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)

People , Health , Law , Nature

“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)

Feeling , Sense , Memory

“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)

Hunger , Hell

“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)

Nature , Freedom

“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)

People , Religion

“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

Truth , Memory

“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

Goodbye , Age , Music , Painting

“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)

“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

Children , Age , Feeling , Time

“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)

Men , Feeling , Parting

“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

Faith , Hurt , Clothes

“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!”

Denis Diderot

p, 125
Jacques le Fataliste (1796)

Children , Change , Heart

“Gratitude is a burden, and every burden is made to be shaken off.”

Denis Diderot book Rameau's Nephew

La reconnaissance est un fardeau, et tout fardeau est fait pour être secoué.
Rameau's Nephew (1762)

Gratitude

“Jacques said that his master said that everything good or evil we encounter here below was written on high.”

Denis Diderot

Prologue
Jacques le Fataliste (1796)

Evil

“The infant runs toward it with its eyes closed, the adult is stationary, the old man approaches it with his back turned.”

Denis Diderot

"Death"
Elements of Physiology (1875)

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

Denis Diderot

Observations on the Drawing Up of Laws (1774)

Country

“Distance is a great promoter of admiration!”

Denis Diderot

As quoted in Thesaurus of Epigrams: A New Classified Collection of Witty Remarks, Bon Mots and Toasts (1942) by Edmund Fuller

“Impenetrable in their dissimulation, cruel in their vengeance, tenacious in their purposes, unscrupulous as to their methods, animated by profound and hidden hatred for the tyranny of man — it is as though there exists among them an ever-present conspiracy toward domination, a sort of alliance like that subsisting among the priests of every country.”

Denis Diderot

"On Women" (1772), as translated in Selected Writings (1966) edited by Lester G. Crocker

Animals , Country

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

Denis Diderot

On doit exiger de moi que je cherche la vérité, mais non que je la trouve.
No. 29; Variant translation: I can be expected to look for truth but not to find it.
Pensées Philosophiques (1746)

Truth

“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.”

Denis Diderot

Conclusion
Elements of Physiology (1875)

World , Strong , Housing

“Only a very bad theologian would confuse the certainty that follows revelation with the truths that are revealed. They are entirely different things.”

Denis Diderot

Apology for the Abbé de Prades (1752)

Truth

“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.”

Denis Diderot

No. 4
On the Interpretation of Nature (1753)

“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.”

Denis Diderot

Ceci n’est pas un conte [This Is No Tale] (1796),

Stupidity , Beauty , Intelligence

“To say that man is a compound of strength and weakness, light and darkness, smallness and greatness, is not to indict him, it is to define him.”

Denis Diderot

As quoted in The Anchor Book of French Quotations with English Translations (1963) by Norbert Gutermam
Pensées Philosophiques (1746)

Light

“It has been said that love robs those who have it of their wit, and gives it to those who have none.”

Denis Diderot

Paradoxe sur le Comédien (1773-1777)

Love

“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.”

Denis Diderot

Observations on the Drawing Up of Laws (1774)

Fear , Religion

“Bad company is as instructive as licentiousness. One makes up for the loss of one’s innocence with the loss of one’s prejudices.”

Denis Diderot book Rameau's Nephew

Rameau's Nephew (1762)

Loss

“I believe in God, although I live very happily with atheists… It is very important not to mistake hemlock for parsley; but not at all so to believe or not in God.”

Denis Diderot

As quoted in Against the Faith (1985) by Jim Herrick, p. 75
Variant translation: It is very important not to mistake hemlock for parsley, but to believe or not believe in God is not important at all.

God

“Justice is the first virtue of those who command, and stops the complaints of those who obey.”

Denis Diderot

As quoted in The Golden Treasury of Thought : A Gathering of Quotations from the Best Ancient and Modern Authors (1873) by Theodore Taylor, p. 227

Justice

“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.”

Denis Diderot

Oeuvres complètes, vol. 7, p. 678

Books

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

Denis Diderot

Observations on the Drawing Up of Laws (1774)

Motivation

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

Denis Diderot

Portraying a fictional conversation of Nicholas Saunderson with a priest, in ' Lettre sur les aveugles [Letter about the Blind] (1749), as quoted in Diderot and the Encyclopædists (1897) by John Morley, p. 92. Publication of this work resulted in Diderot being arrested and imprisoned.

God

“Spirit of the staircase" or "Staircase inspiration”

Denis Diderot

L'esprit de l'escalier
This phrase is a famous allusion to the witty remarks one thinks of when it is too late, as when one is leaving a meeting and going down the stairs. Paradoxe sur le Comédien (1773-1777)

“Gaiety — a quality of ordinary men. Genius always presupposes some disorder in the machine.”

Denis Diderot

“Diseases"
Elements of Physiology (1875)

Men

“It is said that desire is a product of the will, but the converse is in fact true: will is a product of desire.”

Denis Diderot

"Will, Freedom”
Elements of Physiology (1875)

“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.”

Denis Diderot

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.
Article on Political Authority, Vol. 1 (1751)
L'Encyclopédie (1751-1766)

“Africans are always vicious... mostly inclined to lasciviousness, vengeance, theft and lies.”

Denis Diderot

As quoted in David Johnson, 'Representing the Cape "Hottentots", from the French Enlightenment to Post-Apartheid South Africa', Eighteenth-Century Studies, 40.4 (Summer 2007), 525-52. https://www.jstor.org/stable/30053727.