Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Reason
Better
Men
Astray
Guides
Instinct
Intelligence
Pure
Animal

More quotes by Denis Diderot

Image
There is only one passion, the passion for happiness.
Denis Diderot
Image
There is less harm to be suffered in being mad among madmen than in being sane all by oneself.
Denis Diderot
Image
The bad gives rise to the good, the good inspires the better, the better produces the excellent, the excellent is followed by the bizarre
Denis Diderot
Image
Isn't it better to have men being ungrateful than to miss a chance to do good?
Denis Diderot
Image
We are all instruments endowed with feeling and memory. Our senses are so many strings that are struck by surrounding objects and that also frequently strike themselves.
Denis Diderot
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.
Denis Diderot
Image
My friend, you should blow out your candle in order to find your way more clearly.
Denis Diderot
Image
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
Image
Gaiety is a quality of ordinary men. Genius always presupposes some disorder in the machine.
Denis Diderot
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Only the bad man is alone.
Denis Diderot
Image
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
Image
We swallow greedily any lie that flatters us, but we sip only little by little at a truth we find bitter.
Denis Diderot
Image
I can be expected to look for truth but not to find it.
Denis Diderot
Image
There is no moral precept that does not have something inconvenient about it.
Denis Diderot
Image
To prove the Gospels by a miracle is to prove an absurdity by something contrary to nature.
Denis Diderot
Image
Scepticism is the first step towards truth.
Denis Diderot