Quote

Which is the greater merit, to enlighten the human race, which remains forever, or to save one's fatherland, which is perishable?

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
Atheism
Remains
Forever
Perishable
Race
Enlighten
Greater
Fatherland
Human
Enlightening
Humans
Merit
Save

More quotes by Denis Diderot

Image
My friend, you should blow out your candle in order to find your way more clearly.
Denis Diderot
Image
The Christian religion teaches us to imitate a God that is cruel, insidious, jealous, and implacable in his wrath.
Denis Diderot
Image
No man has received from nature the right to command his fellow human beings.
Denis Diderot
Image
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
Image
Gaiety is a quality of ordinary men. Genius always presupposes some disorder in the machine.
Denis Diderot
Image
Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.
Denis Diderot
Image
If reason be a gift of Heaven, and we can say as much of faith, Heaven has certainly made us two gifts not only incompatible, but in direct contradiction to each other. In order to solve the difficulty, we are compelled to say either that faith is a chimera or that reason is useless.
Denis Diderot
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Time, matter, space - all, it may be, are no more than a point.
Denis Diderot
Image
Two qualities essential for the artist: moralityand perspective.
Denis Diderot
Image
There are cats and cats.
Denis Diderot
Image
Whether God exists or does not exist, He has come to rank among the most sublime and useless truths.
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
We swallow greedily any lie that flatters us, but we sip only little by little at a truth we find bitter.
Denis Diderot
Image
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
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
If there were a reason for preferring the Christian religion to natural religion, it would be because the former offers us, on the nature of God and man, enlightenment that the latter lacks. Now, this is not at all the case for Christianity, instead of clarifying, gives rise to an infinite multitude of obscurities and difficulties.
Denis Diderot
Image
The world is the house of the strong.
Denis Diderot