“And his hands would plait the priest's entrails,
For want of a rope, to strangle kings.”

— Denis Diderot

Et ses mains ourdiraient les entrailles du prêtre,
Au défaut d’un cordon pour étrangler les rois.
"Les Éleuthéromanes", in Poésies Diverses (1875)
Variant translation: His hands would plait the priest's guts, if he had no rope, to strangle kings.
This derives from the prior statement widely attributed to Jean Meslier: "I would like — and this would be the last and most ardent of my wishes — I would like the last of the kings to be strangled by the guts of the last priest". It is often claimed the passage appears in Meslier's Testament (1725) but it only appears in abstracts of the work written by others. See the Wikipedia article Jean Meslier for details.
Let us strangle the last king with the guts of the last priest.
Attributed to Diderot by Jean-François de La Harpe in Cours de Littérature Ancienne et Moderne (1840)
Attributions to Diderot of similar statements also occur in various forms, i.e.: "Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest."
Variant: Et des boyaux du dernier prêtre
Serrons le cou du dernier roi.

Original

Et ses mains ourdiraient les entrailles du prêtre, Au défaut d’un cordon pour étrangler les rois.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Denis Diderot 106

French Enlightenment philosopher and encyclopædist 1713–1784

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