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Power acquired by violence is only a usurpation, and lasts only as long as the force of him who commands prevails over that of those who obey.

Denis Diderot

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Denis Diderot
Age: 70 †
Born: 1713
Born: October 5
Died: 1784
Died: July 31
Abbé
Art Critic
Art Theorist
Correspondent
Encyclopédistes
Essayist
Historian
Lexicographer
Literary Critic
Literary Theorist
Lumières
Diderot
Command
Violence
Literature
Usurpation
Lasts
Prevails
Force
Commands
Power
Acquired
Long
Obey
Denial

More quotes by Denis Diderot

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A nation which thinks that it is belief in God and not good law which makes people honest does not seem to me very advanced.
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We swallow with one gulp the lie that flatters us, and drink drop by drop the truth which is bitter to us.
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There are things I can't force. I must adjust. There are times when the greatest change needed is a change of my viewpoint.
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Tous les jours on couche avec des femmes qu'on n'aime pas, et l'on ne couche pas avec des femmes qu'on aime. Every day we sleep with women we do not love and don't sleep with the women we do love.
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In general, children, like men, and men, like children, prefer entertainment to education.
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If reason be a gift of Heaven, and we can say as much of faith, Heaven has certainly made us two gifts not only incompatible, but in direct contradiction to each other. In order to solve the difficulty, we are compelled to say either that faith is a chimera or that reason is useless.
Denis Diderot
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One may demand of me that I should seek truth, but not that I should find it
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The decisions of law courts should never be printed: in the long run, they form a counter authority to the law.
Denis Diderot
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Justice is the first virtue of those who command, and stops the complaints of those who obey.
Denis Diderot
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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.
Denis Diderot
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Superstition is more injurious to God than atheism.
Denis Diderot
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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.
Denis Diderot
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The world is the house of the strong. I shall not know until the end what I have lost or won in this place, in this vast gambling den where I have spent more than sixty years, dice box in hand, shaking the dice.
Denis Diderot
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The pit of a theatre is the one place where the tears of virtuous and wicked men alike are mingled.
Denis Diderot
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The bad gives rise to the good, the good inspires the better, the better produces the excellent, the excellent is followed by the bizarre
Denis Diderot
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No man has received from nature the right to command his fellow human beings.
Denis Diderot
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Only God and some few rare geniuses can keep forging ahead into novelty.
Denis Diderot
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Ignorance is less remote from the truth than prejudice.
Denis Diderot
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The possibility of divorce renders both marriage partners stricter in their observance of the duties they owe to each other. Divorces help to improve morals and to increase the population.
Denis Diderot
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All things must be examined, debated, investigated without exception and without regard for anyone's feelings... We must run roughshod over all these ancient puerilities, overturn the barriers that reason never erected, give back to the arts and sciences the liberty that is so precious to them.
Denis Diderot