Denis Diderot Quotes

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Denis Diderot

Profession : Editor

Birth : October 5, 1713

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

Denis Diderot

Our observation of nature must be diligent, our reflection profound, and our experiments exact. We rarely see these three means combined; and for this reason, creative geniuses are not common.

Denis Diderot

Evil always turns up in this world through some genius or other.

Denis Diderot

Every man has his dignity. I'm willing to forget mine, but at my own discretion and not when someone else tells me to.

Denis Diderot

It is not human nature we should accuse but the despicable conventions that pervert it.

Denis Diderot

There is no moral precept that does not have something inconvenient about it.

Denis Diderot

Good music is very close to primitive language.

Denis Diderot

Bad company is as instructive as licentiousness. One makes up for the loss of one's innocence with the loss of one's prejudices.

Denis Diderot

The decisions of law courts should never be printed: in the long run, they form a counter authority to the law.

Denis Diderot

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.

Denis Diderot

If there is one realm in which it is essential to be sublime, it is in wickedness. You spit on a petty thief, but you can't deny a kind of respect for the great criminal.

Denis Diderot

The God of the Christians is a father who makes much of his apples, and very little of his children.

Denis Diderot

All abstract sciences are nothing but the study of relations between signs.

Denis Diderot

Gaiety is a quality of ordinary men. Genius always presupposes some disorder in the machine.

Denis Diderot