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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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Denis Diderot
Age: 70 †
Born: 1713
Born: October 5
Died: 1784
Died: July 31
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Time, matter, space - all, it may be, are no more than a point.
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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.
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Justice is the first virtue of those who command, and stops the complaints of those who obey.
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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.
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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
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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.
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Those authors into whose hands nature has placed a magic wand, with which they no sooner touch us than we forget the unhappiness in life, than the darkness leaves our soul, and we are reconciled to existence, should be placed among the benefactors of the human race.
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If exclusive privileges were not granted, and if the financial system would not tend to concentrate wealth, there would be few great fortunes and no quick wealth. When the means of growing rich is divided between a greater number of citizens, wealth will also be more evenly distributed extreme poverty and extreme wealth would be also rare.
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But if you will recall the history of our civil troubles, you will see half the nation bathe itself, out of piety, in the blood of the other half, and violate the fundamental feelings of humanity in order to sustain the cause of God: as though it were necessary to cease to be a man in order to prove oneself religious!
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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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When one compares the talents one has with those of a Leibniz , one is tempted to throw away one's books and go die quietly in the dark of some forgotten corner.
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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
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Anyone who takes it upon himself, on his private authority, to break a bad law, thereby authorizes everyone else to break the good ones.
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No man has received from nature the right to command his fellow human beings.
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The world is the house of the strong.
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You have to make it happen.
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My friend, you should blow out your candle in order to find your way more clearly.
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You can be sure that a painter reveals himself in his work as much as and more than a writer does in his.
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When shall we see poets born? After a time of disasters and great misfortunes, when harrowed nations begin to breathe again. And then, shaken by the terror of such spectacles, imaginations will paint things entirely strange to those who have not witnessed them.
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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.
Denis Diderot