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En ge ne ral, plus un peuple est civilise , poli, moins ses moeurs sont poe tiques tout s'affaiblit en s'adoucissant. Ingeneral, themore civilized and refinedthepeople, the less poetic are its morals everything weakens as it mellows.

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
Morals
Poetic
Civilized
Plus
Moral
Less
Sont
Everything
Tout
Weakens

More quotes by Denis Diderot

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Disturbances in society are never more fearful than when those who are stirring up the trouble can use the pretext of religion to mask their true designs.
Denis Diderot
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Integrity is the evidence of all civil virtues.
Denis Diderot
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Justice is the first virtue of those who command, and stops the complaints of those who obey.
Denis Diderot
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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
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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.
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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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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Skepticism is the first step on the road to philosophy.
Denis Diderot
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You can be sure that a painter reveals himself in his work as much as and more than a writer does in his.
Denis Diderot
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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.
Denis Diderot
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In general, children, like men, and men, like children, prefer entertainment to education.
Denis Diderot
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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.
Denis Diderot
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The blood of Jesus Christ can cover a multitude of sins, it seems to me.
Denis Diderot
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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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Whether God exists or does not exist, He has come to rank among the most sublime and useless truths.
Denis Diderot
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Scepticism is the first step towards truth.
Denis Diderot
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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
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If you disturb the colors of the rainbow, the rainbow is no longer beautiful.
Denis Diderot
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Do you see this egg? With this you can topple every theological theory, every church or temple in the world.
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