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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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Denis Diderot
Age: 70 †
Born: 1713
Born: October 5
Died: 1784
Died: July 31
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Which is the greater merit, to enlighten the human race, which remains forever, or to save one's fatherland, which is perishable?
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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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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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Integrity is the evidence of all civil virtues.
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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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Time, matter, space - all, it may be, are no more than a point.
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Gratitude is a burden, and every burden is made to be shaken off.
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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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Gaiety is a quality of ordinary men. Genius always presupposes some disorder in the machine.
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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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Superstition is more injurious to God than atheism.
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Posterity for the philosopher is what the other world is for the religious man.
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Le public ne sait pas toujours de sirer le vrai. Thepublicdoesnot alwaysknowhow todesirethetruth.
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He whom we call a gentleman is no longer the man of Nature.
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The pit of a theatre is the one place where the tears of virtuous and wicked men alike are mingled.
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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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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.
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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.
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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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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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