“The more man ascends through the past, and the more he launches into the future, the greater he will be”

— Denis Diderot

As quoted in "Diderot" in The Great Infidels (1881) by Robert Green Ingersoll; The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll Vol. III (1900), p. 367
Context: The more man ascends through the past, and the more he launches into the future, the greater he will be, and all these philosophers and ministers and truth-telling men who have fallen victims to the stupidity of nations, the atrocities of priests, the fury of tyrants, what consolation was left for them in death? This: That prejudice would pass, and that posterity would pour out the vial of ignominy upon their enemies. O Posterity! Holy and sacred stay of the unhappy and the oppressed; thou who art just, thou who art incorruptible, thou who findest the good man, who unmaskest the hypocrite, who breakest down the tyrant, may thy sure faith, thy consoling faith never, never abandon me!

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

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The more man ascends through the past, and the more he launches into the future, the greater he will be" by Denis Diderot?

Denis Diderot 106

French Enlightenment philosopher and encyclopædist 1713–1784

Related quotes

“More and more Emerson recedes grandly into history, as the future he predicted becomes a past.”

Robert Penn Warren (1905–1989) American poet, novelist, and literary critic

Acceptance speech for the 1970 National Medal for Literature, New York, New York (2 December 1970)

“Kandinsky was an optimist; he had been interested, at first, in fairy tales and legends and chivalrous themes of the past, but he then became increasingly interested, after 1908, in formulating what he called the art of the future rather than indulging in romantic visions of the past. Kubin, on the other hand was a pessimist, always haunted by the past and suspicious of the future. This basic difference in their temperaments made their discussions all the more fruitful, and their friendship was the more intense.”

Gabriele Münter (1877–1962) German painter

Source: Interview by Edouard Roditi (1958), p. 118

“But the more he is alone with nature, the greater man and his doings bulk in the consideration of his fellow-men.”

Robert Louis Stevenson book The Silverado Squatters

Toils And Pleasures.
The Silverado Squatters (1883)

“The higher a man stands on the social ladder, the greater the number of people he is connected with, the more power he has over other people, the more obvious is the predestination and inevitability of his every action.”

Leo Tolstoy book War and Peace

Source: War and Peace

“A man who denies his past is a man who truly denies himself a future, for he refuses to know himself, and to deny knowledge of oneself is to stumble through life as handicapped as the blind mute.”

Tobsha Learner (1959) British writer

Source: The Witch of Cologne

“The more a man knows, the more willing he is to learn. The less a man knows, the more positive he is that he knows everything…”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

“A man is only a mature boy. The theatre widens as he ascends.”

David Jewett Waller, Sr. (1815–1893) Pennsylvanian minister and civic leader

September 20, 1870, as attributed in Preacher, Entrepreneur: Rev. D.J. Waller Sr. by William M. Ballie (2011)

“I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority.”

E. B. White (1899–1985) American writer

"Coon Tree," The New Yorker (14 June 1956), The Points of My Compass: Letters from the East, the West, the North, the South (1962); reprinted in Essays of E.B. White (1977)

“A man cannot free himself from the past more easily than he can from his own body.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Thinking

“The future is more beautiful than all the pasts.”

Pierre Teilhard De Chardin (1881–1955) French philosopher and Jesuit priest

Letter (5 September 1919), in The Making of a Mind: Letters from a Soldier-Priest 1914–1919

“The more man ascends through the past, and the more he launches into the future, the greater he will be”

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Denis Diderot 106

Related quotes

Related topics