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My friend, you should blow out your candle in order to find your way more clearly.

Denis Diderot

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Denis Diderot
Age: 70 †
Born: 1713
Born: October 5
Died: 1784
Died: July 31
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Art Critic
Art Theorist
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Encyclopédistes
Essayist
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Literary Critic
Literary Theorist
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Diderot
Way
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Clearly
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More quotes by Denis Diderot

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There's a bit of testicle at the bottom of our most sublime feelings and our purest tenderness.
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I can be expected to look for truth but not to find it.
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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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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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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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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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Posterity for the philosopher is what the other world is for the religious man.
Denis Diderot
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I feel, I think, I judge therefore, a part of organized matter like me is capable of feeling, thinking, and judging.
Denis Diderot
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We are far more liable to catch the vices than the virtues of our associates.
Denis Diderot
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Isn't it better to have men being ungrateful than to miss a chance to do good?
Denis Diderot
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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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Power acquired by violence is only a usurpation, and lasts only as long as the force of him who commands prevails over that of those who obey.
Denis Diderot
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We swallow greedily any lie that flatters us, but we sip only little by little at a truth we find bitter.
Denis Diderot
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Instinct guides the animal better than the man. In the animal it is pure, in man it is led astray by his reason and intelligence.
Denis Diderot
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There is only one virtue, justice only one duty, to be happy only one corollary, not to overvalue life and not to fear death.
Denis Diderot
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To prove the Gospels by a miracle is to prove an absurdity by something contrary to nature.
Denis Diderot
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We swallow with one gulp the lie that flatters us, and drink drop by drop the truth which is bitter to us.
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.
Denis Diderot
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All things must be examined, debated, investigated without exception and without regard for anyone's feelings.
Denis Diderot
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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?
Denis Diderot