Denis Diderot Quotes

Do you see this egg? With this you can topple every theological theory, every church or temple in the world. What is it, this egg, before the seed is introduced into it? An insentient mass. And after the seed has been introduced to into it? What is it then? An insentient mass. For what is the seed itself other than a crude and inanimate fluid? How is this mass to make a transition to a different structure, to sentience, to life? Through heat. And what will produce that heat in it? Motion.

To prove the Gospels by a miracle is to prove an absurdity by something contrary to nature.

One cannot get rid of a good education, nor, unfortunately, of a bad one, which often is such because one has not wanted to defray the expenses of a good one.

JACQUES: Moi, monsieur, à l'eau ! Jacques à l'eau bénite ! J'aimerais mieux que mille légions de diables me restassent dans le corps, que d'en boire une goutte, bénite ou non bénite.

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.

إنّ الشرف والفضيلة ، حين يكونا حقيقيين ، ليس لهما من ثمنٍ بتاتاً عند الذين سعدوا بامتلاكهما

[L]e philosophe n'a jamais tué de prêtres et le prêtre a tué beaucoup de philosophes...

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

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.

We swallow greedily any lie that flatters us, but we sip only little by little at a truth we find bitter.

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!

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

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.

كان من أولئك الذين, مع الأسف, ولدوا لكي يمارسوا الفضيلة دون أن يشعروا بحلاوتها, ممن يفعلون الخير من منطلق تطبيق النظام, كما يحاكمون الأمور.

Se me debe exigir que busque la verdad, pero no que la encuentre.