Quote

Anyone who takes it upon himself, on his private authority, to break a bad law, thereby authorizes everyone else to break the good ones.

Denis Diderot

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Good
Ones
Takes
Break
Law
Anyone
Authorizes
Upon
Thereby
Everyone
Private
Else
Authority

More quotes by Denis Diderot

Image
Every man has his dignity. I'm willing to forget mine, but at my own discretion and not when someone else tells me to.
Denis Diderot
Image
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
Image
I can be expected to look for truth but not to find it.
Denis Diderot
Image
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
Image
In general, children, like men, and men, like children, prefer entertainment to education.
Denis Diderot
Image
When one compares the talents one has with those of a Leibniz , one is tempted to throw away one's books and go die quietly in the dark of some forgotten corner.
Denis Diderot
Image
The pit of a theatre is the one place where the tears of virtuous and wicked men alike are mingled.
Denis Diderot
Image
To prove the Gospels by a miracle is to prove an absurdity by something contrary to nature.
Denis Diderot
Image
Jacques said that his master said that everything good or evil we encounter here below was written on high.
Denis Diderot
Image
In order to get as much fame as one's father one has to much more able than he.
Denis Diderot
Image
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.
Denis Diderot
Image
If there are one hundred thousand damned souls for one saved soul, the devil has always the advantage without having given up his son to death.
Denis Diderot
Image
What is a monster? A being whose survival is incompatible with the existing order.
Denis Diderot
Image
If reason be a gift of Heaven, and we can say as much of faith, Heaven has certainly made us two gifts not only incompatible, but in direct contradiction to each other. In order to solve the difficulty, we are compelled to say either that faith is a chimera or that reason is useless.
Denis Diderot
Image
We swallow with one gulp the lie that flatters us, and drink drop by drop the truth which is bitter to us.
Denis Diderot
Image
There is no good father who would want to resemble our Heavenly Father.
Denis Diderot
Image
They mistake the first manifestations of a developing sexual nature for the voice of God calling them to Himself and it is precisely when nature is inciting them that they embrace a fashion of life contrary to nature's wish.
Denis Diderot
Image
He whom we call a gentleman is no longer the man of Nature.
Denis Diderot
Image
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
Image
The world is the house of the strong.
Denis Diderot