"The infant runs toward it with its eyes closed, the adult is stationary, the old man approaches it with his back turned."
Read quote
6 likes
Quote collection
Denis Diderot quotes (page 8 of 10)
187 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"The arbitrary rule of a just and enlightened prince is always bad. His virtues are the most dangerous and the surest form of seduction: they lull a people imperceptibly into the habit of loving, respecting, and serving his successor, whoever that successor may be, no matter how wicked or stupid."
Read quote
6 likes
"Man was born to live with his fellow human beings. Separate him, isolate him, his character will go bad, a thousand ridiculous affects will invade his heart, extravagant thoughts will germinate in his brain, like thorns in an uncultivated land."
Read quote
6 likes
"All abstract sciences are nothing but the study of relations between signs."
Read quote
6 likes
"Does anyone really know where they're going to?"
Read quote
6 likes
"It has been said that love robs those who have it of their wit, and gives it to those who have none."
Read quote
5 likes
"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."
Read quote
5 likes
"What is a monster? A being whose survival is incompatible with the existing order."
Read quote
5 likes
"At an early age I sucked up the milk of Homer, Virgil, Horace, Terence, Anacreon, Plato and Euripides, diluted with that of Moses and the prophets."
Read quote
5 likes
"I have only a small flickering light to guide me in the darkness of a thick forest. Up comes a theologian and blows it out."
Read quote
5 likes
"Which is the greater merit, to enlighten the human race, which remains forever, or to save one's fatherland, which is perishable?"
Read quote
5 likes
"Do you see this egg? With this you can topple every theological theory, every church or temple in the world."
Read quote
5 likes
"I am more affected by the attractions of virtue than by the deformities of vice; I turn gently away from the wicked and I fly to meet the good. If there is in a literary work, in a character, in a picture, in a statue, a beautiful spot, that is where my eyes rest; I see only that, I remember only that, all the rest is well-nigh forgotten. What becomes of me when the whole work is beautiful!"
Read quote
5 likes
"We are a free people; and now you have planted in our country the title deeds of our future slavery. You are neither god nor demon; who are you, then, to make slaves? Orou! You understand the language of these men, tell us all, as you have told me, what they have written on this sheet of metal: This country is ours. This country yours? And why? Because you have walked thereon? If a Tahitian landed one day on your shores, and scratched on one of your rocks or on the bark of your trees: This country belongs to the people of Tahiti - what would you think?"
Read quote
5 likes
"Only God and some few rare geniuses can keep forging ahead into novelty."
Read quote
5 likes
"Integrity is the evidence of all civil virtues."
Read quote
5 likes
"Two qualities essential for the artist: moralityand perspective."
Read quote
4 likes
"The fact is that she was terribly undressed and I was extremely undressed too. The fact is that I still had my hand where she didn't have anything and she had hers where the same wasn't quite true of me. The fact is that I found myself underneath her and consequently she found herself on top of me."
Read quote
4 likes
"Philosophy is as far separated from impiety as religion is from fanaticism."
Read quote
4 likes
"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."
Read quote
4 likes