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No man has received from nature the right to give orders to others. Freedom is a gift from heaven, and every individual of the same species has the right to enjoy it as soon as he is in enjoyment of his reason.

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
Give
Soon
Reason
Heaven
Right
Freedom
Giving
Enjoy
Orders
Every
Individual
Received
Men
Others
Enjoyment
Order
Species
Nature
Gift

More quotes by 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.
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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.
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There is no moral precept that does not have something inconvenient about it.
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Skepticism is the first step on the road to philosophy.
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He whom we call a gentleman is no longer the man of Nature.
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Only God and some few rare geniuses can keep forging ahead into novelty.
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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.
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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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Every man has his dignity. I'm willing to forget mine, but at my own discretion and not when someone else tells me to.
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The most dangerous madmen are those created by religion, and people whose aim is to disrupt society always know how to make good use of them on occasion.
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Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.
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La poe sie veutquelque chose d'e norme, debarbare et de sauvage. Poetry needs something on the scale of the grand, the barbarous, the savage.
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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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No man has received from nature the right to command his fellow human beings.
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.
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The wisest among us is very lucky never to have met the woman, be she beautiful or ugly, intelligent or stupid, who could drive him crazy enough to be fit to be put into an asylum.
Denis Diderot
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Mankind have banned the Divinity from their presence they have relegated him to a sanctuary the walls of the temple restrict his view he does not exist outside of it.
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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If the weather is too cold or rainy, I take shelter in the Regence Cafe, where I entertain myself by watching chess being played. Paris is the world center, and this cafe is the Paris centre for the finest skill at this game.
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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.
Denis Diderot