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Which is the greater merit, to enlighten the human race, which remains forever, or to save one's fatherland, which is perishable?
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
Greater
Fatherland
Human
Enlightening
Humans
Merit
Save
Atheism
Remains
Forever
Perishable
Race
Enlighten
More quotes by Denis Diderot
The decisions of law courts should never be printed: in the long run, they form a counter authority to the law.
Denis Diderot
You risk just as much in being credulous as in being suspicious.
Denis Diderot
The general interest of the masses might take the place of the insight of genius if it were allowed freedom of action.
Denis Diderot
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
Only God and some few rare geniuses can keep forging ahead into novelty.
Denis Diderot
There are cats and cats.
Denis Diderot
One may demand of me that I should seek truth, but not that I should find it
Denis Diderot
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
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
If there is one realm in which it is essential to be sublime, it is in wickedness. You spit on a petty thief, but you can't deny a kind of respect for the great criminal.
Denis Diderot
There's a bit of testicle at the bottom of our most sublime feelings and our purest tenderness.
Denis Diderot
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
Isn't it better to have men being ungrateful than to miss a chance to do good?
Denis Diderot
A thing is not proved just because no one has ever questioned it. What has never been gone into impartially has never been properly gone into. Hence scepticism is the first step toward truth. It must be applied generally, because it is the touchstone.
Denis Diderot
Posterity for the philosopher is what the other world is for the religious man.
Denis Diderot
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
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
Justice is the first virtue of those who command, and stops the complaints of those who obey.
Denis Diderot
The possibility of divorce renders both marriage partners stricter in their observance of the duties they owe to each other. Divorces help to improve morals and to increase the population.
Denis Diderot
I feel, I think, I judge therefore, a part of organized matter like me is capable of feeling, thinking, and judging.
Denis Diderot
