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The wisest among us is very lucky never to have met the woman, be she beautiful or ugly, intelligent or stupid, who could drive him crazy enough to be fit to be put into an asylum.

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
Woman
Mets
Beautiful
Fit
Enough
Ugly
Never
Intelligent
Among
Asylum
Lucky
Asylums
Stupid
Wisest
Crazy
Drive

More quotes by Denis Diderot

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Only passions, and great passions, can raise the soul to great things. Without them there is no sublimity, either in morals or in creativity. Art returns to infancy, and virtue becomes small-minded.
Denis Diderot
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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.
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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.
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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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If you disturb the colors of the rainbow, the rainbow is no longer beautiful.
Denis Diderot
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If exclusive privileges were not granted, and if the financial system would not tend to concentrate wealth, there would be few great fortunes and no quick wealth. When the means of growing rich is divided between a greater number of citizens, wealth will also be more evenly distributed extreme poverty and extreme wealth would be also rare.
Denis Diderot
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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
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The world is the house of the strong. I shall not know until the end what I have lost or won in this place, in this vast gambling den where I have spent more than sixty years, dice box in hand, shaking the dice.
Denis Diderot
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All things must be examined, debated, investigated without exception and without regard for anyone's feelings.
Denis Diderot
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Those authors into whose hands nature has placed a magic wand, with which they no sooner touch us than we forget the unhappiness in life, than the darkness leaves our soul, and we are reconciled to existence, should be placed among the benefactors of the human race.
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 are cats and cats.
Denis Diderot
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The philosopher has never killed any priests, whereas the priest has killed a great many philosophers.
Denis Diderot
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If the weather is too cold or rainy, I take shelter in the Regence Cafe, where I entertain myself by watching chess being played. Paris is the world center, and this cafe is the Paris centre for the finest skill at this game.
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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It is not the man who is beside himself, but he who is cool and collected,--who is master of his countenance, of his voice, of his actions, of his gestures, of every part of his play,--who can work upon others at his pleasure.
Denis Diderot
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Gratitude is a burden, and every burden is made to be shaken off.
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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The arbitrary rule of a just and enlightened prince is always bad. His virtues are the most dangerous and the surest form of seduction: they lull a people imperceptibly into the habit of loving, respecting, and serving his successor, whoever that successor may be, no matter how wicked or stupid.
Denis Diderot
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We are far more liable to catch the vices than the virtues of our associates.
Denis Diderot