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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

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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
Company
Religion
Makes
Licentiousness
Instructive
Prejudices
Innocence
Prejudice
Loss

More quotes by Denis Diderot

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Superstition is more injurious to God than atheism.
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In order to get as much fame as one's father one has to much more able than he.
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First of all move me, surprise me, rend my heart make me tremble, weep, shudder outrage me delight my eyes afterwards if you can.
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Isn't it better to have men being ungrateful than to miss a chance to do good?
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Whether God exists or does not exist, He has come to rank among the most sublime and useless truths.
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We are far more liable to catch the vices than the virtues of our associates.
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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.
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All things must be examined, debated, investigated without exception and without regard for anyone's feelings.
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If there are one hundred thousand damned souls for one saved soul, the devil has always the advantage without having given up his son to death.
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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
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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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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
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And his hands would plait the priest's entrails, For want of a rope, to strangle kings.
Denis Diderot
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Time, matter, space - all, it may be, are no more than a point.
Denis Diderot
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What has not been examined impartially has not been well examined. Skepticism is therefore the first step towards truth.
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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One must be oneself very little of a philosopher not to feel that the finest privilege of our reason consists in not believing in anything by the impulsion of a blind and mechanical instinct, and that it is to dishonour reason to put it in bonds as the Chaldeans did. Man is born to think for himself.
Denis Diderot
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A thing is not proved just because no one has ever questioned it. What has never been gone into impartially has never been properly gone into. Hence scepticism is the first step toward truth. It must be applied generally, because it is the touchstone.
Denis Diderot
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From fanaticism to barbarism is only one step.
Denis Diderot
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The general interest of the masses might take the place of the insight of genius if it were allowed freedom of action.
Denis Diderot