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One may demand of me that I should seek truth, but not that I should find it

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
Seek
Demand
Truth
May
Find

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.
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No man has received from nature the right to command his fellow human beings.
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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.
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I feel, I think, I judge therefore, a part of organized matter like me is capable of feeling, thinking, and judging.
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If you disturb the colors of the rainbow, the rainbow is no longer beautiful.
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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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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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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.
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In any country where talent and virtue produce no advancement, money will be the national god. Its inhabitants will either have to possess money or make others believe that they do. Wealth will be the highest virtue, poverty the greatest vice.
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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Are we not madder than those first inhabitants of the plain of Sennar? We know that the distance separating the earth from the sky is infinite, and yet we do not stop building our tower.
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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How easy it is to tell tales!
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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What is a monster? A being whose survival is incompatible with the existing order.
Denis Diderot
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Those who fear the facts will forever try to discredit the fact-finders.
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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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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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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There is only one passion, the passion for happiness.
Denis Diderot