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We are all instruments endowed with feeling and memory. Our senses are so many strings that are struck by surrounding objects and that also frequently strike themselves.

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
Body
Perception
Struck
Many
Memory
Strike
Objects
Frequently
Memories
Strings
Philosophy
Strikes
Feeling
Senses
Soma
Feelings
Instruments
Endowed
Also
Medicine
Surrounding

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Ignorance is less remote from the truth than prejudice.
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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.
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And his hands would plait the priest's entrails, For want of a rope, to strangle kings.
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I discuss with myself questions of politics, love, taste, or philosophy. I let my mind rove wantonly, give it free rein to followany idea, wise or mad that may present itself. My ideas are my harlots.
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Scepticism is the first step towards truth.
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What is a monster? A being whose survival is incompatible with the existing order.
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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.
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There is no moral precept that does not have something inconvenient about it.
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Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.
Denis Diderot
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There is only one passion, the passion for happiness.
Denis Diderot
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Only a very bad theologian would confuse the certainty that follows revelation with the truths that are revealed. They are entirely different things.
Denis Diderot
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Integrity is the evidence of all civil virtues.
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We are far more liable to catch the vices than the virtues of our associates.
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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!
Denis Diderot
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In order to get as much fame as one's father one has to much more able than he.
Denis Diderot
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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.
Denis Diderot
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Skepticism is the first step on the road to philosophy.
Denis Diderot
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Whether God exists or does not exist, He has come to rank among the most sublime and useless truths.
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.
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