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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
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Art Critic
Art Theorist
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Diderot
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More quotes by Denis Diderot
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
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
Those who fear the facts will forever try to discredit the fact-finders.
Denis Diderot
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
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
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
What has not been examined impartially has not been well examined. Skepticism is therefore the first step towards truth.
Denis Diderot
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
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
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
Justice is the first virtue of those who command, and stops the complaints of those who obey.
Denis Diderot
If you disturb the colors of the rainbow, the rainbow is no longer beautiful.
Denis Diderot
Scepticism is the first step towards truth.
Denis Diderot
There is no moral precept that does not have something inconvenient about it.
Denis Diderot
Only God and some few rare geniuses can keep forging ahead into novelty.
Denis Diderot
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
He whom we call a gentleman is no longer the man of Nature.
Denis Diderot
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
The pit of a theatre is the one place where the tears of virtuous and wicked men alike are mingled.
Denis Diderot
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
