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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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My friend, you should blow out your candle in order to find your way more clearly.
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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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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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.
Denis Diderot
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Evil always turns up in this world through some genius or other.
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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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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There is less harm to be suffered in being mad among madmen than in being sane all by oneself.
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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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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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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Morals are in all countries the result of legislation and government they are not African or Asian or European: they are good or bad.
Denis Diderot
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Two qualities essential for the artist: moralityand perspective.
Denis Diderot
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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
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A thing is not proved because no one has ever questioned it... Skepticism is the first step toward truth.
Denis Diderot
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To describe women, the pen should be dipped in the humid colors of the rainbow, and the paper dried with the dust gathered from the wings of a butterfly.
Denis Diderot
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The decisions of law courts should never be printed: in the long run, they form a counter authority to the law.
Denis Diderot
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Time, matter, space - all, it may be, are no more than a point.
Denis Diderot
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When superstition is allowed to perform the task of old age in dulling the human temperament, we can say goodbye to all excellence in poetry, in painting, and in music.
Denis Diderot
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The blood of Jesus Christ can cover a multitude of sins, it seems to me.
Denis Diderot