Denis Diderot Quotes

... c'est la magie de la constance, la plus difficile et la plus rare de nos vertus.

What is a monster? A being whose survival is incompatible with the existing order.

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

People of North America: may the example of all those nations that have preceded you, and especially that of your motherland, be your guide. Beware the abundance of gold that brings about the corruption of morals and the scorn of law; beware of an unbalanced distribution of wealth that will produce a small number of opulent citizens and a horde of citizens in poverty...

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

Tell me how it is that whoever wrote out the great scroll could have decreed that such would be the reward of a noble act? Why should I, who am merely a miserable compound of faults, take your defence while He calmly watched you being attacked, knocked down, manhandled and trampled underfoot, He who is supposed to be the embodiment of all perfection?

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

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.

If we love truth more than the fine arts, let us pray to God for some iconoclasts.

Life is but a series of misunderstandings.

When we know to read our own hearts, we acquire wisdom of the hearts of others.

Najsretniji je onaj čovjek koji je učinio sretnima najviše ljudi.

The worst of it is how need forces you into certain postures. The man in need doesn’t walk like other people; he jumps, he crawls, he contorts himself, he drags himself along; he spends his life in positions that he has had to take up and maintain.

As long as the centuries continue to unfold, the number of books will grow continually, and one can predict that a time will come when it will be almost as difficult to learn anything from books as from the direct study of the whole universe. It will be almost as convenient to search for some bit of truth concealed in nature as it will be to find it hidden away in an immense multitude of bound volumes.

Nada hay tan difícil de perdonar como el mérito.