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In general, children, like men, and men, like children, prefer entertainment to education.

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
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Diderot
Children
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Education

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There is only one passion, the passion for happiness.
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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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Gaiety is a quality of ordinary men. Genius always presupposes some disorder in the machine.
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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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Only the bad man is alone.
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Evil always turns up in this world through some genius or other.
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First of all move me, surprise me, rend my heart make me tremble, weep, shudder outrage me delight my eyes afterwards if you can.
Denis Diderot
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The Christian religion teaches us to imitate a God that is cruel, insidious, jealous, and implacable in his wrath.
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Integrity is the evidence of all civil virtues.
Denis Diderot
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To say that man is a compound of strength and weakness, light and darkness, smallness and greatness, is not to indict him, it is to define him.
Denis Diderot
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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.
Denis Diderot
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You have to make it happen.
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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.
Denis Diderot
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Only God and some few rare geniuses can keep forging ahead into novelty.
Denis Diderot
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One must be oneself very little of a philosopher not to feel that the finest privilege of our reason consists in not believing in anything by the impulsion of a blind and mechanical instinct, and that it is to dishonour reason to put it in bonds as the Chaldeans did. Man is born to think for himself.
Denis Diderot
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Those who fear the facts will forever try to discredit the fact-finders.
Denis Diderot
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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.
Denis Diderot
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Bad company is as instructive as licentiousness. One makes up for the loss of one's innocence with the loss of one's prejudices.
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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In any country where talent and virtue produce no advancement, money will be the national god. Its inhabitants will either have to possess money or make others believe that they do. Wealth will be the highest virtue, poverty the greatest vice.
Denis Diderot