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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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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
Country
Poverty
Inhabitants
Believe
Talent
Advancement
Make
Wealth
Vice
Greatest
Possess
Virtue
Vices
Either
National
Others
Highest
Money
Produce

More quotes by Denis Diderot

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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.
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There is no good father who would want to resemble our Heavenly Father.
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It is very important not to mistake hemlock for parsley, but to believe or not believe in God is not important at all.
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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.
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The infant runs toward it with its eyes closed, the adult is stationary, the old man approaches it with his back turned.
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You risk just as much in being credulous as in being suspicious.
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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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Posterity for the philosopher is what the other world is for the religious man.
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And his hands would plait the priest's entrails, For want of a rope, to strangle kings.
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La poe sie veutquelque chose d'e norme, debarbare et de sauvage. Poetry needs something on the scale of the grand, the barbarous, the savage.
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In order to get as much fame as one's father one has to much more able than he.
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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
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Whether God exists or does not exist, He has come to rank among the most sublime and useless truths.
Denis Diderot
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From fanaticism to barbarism is only one step.
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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To prove the Gospels by a miracle is to prove an absurdity by something contrary to nature.
Denis Diderot
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The general interest of the masses might take the place of the insight of genius if it were allowed freedom of action.
Denis Diderot
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They mistake the first manifestations of a developing sexual nature for the voice of God calling them to Himself and it is precisely when nature is inciting them that they embrace a fashion of life contrary to nature's wish.
Denis Diderot
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There's a bit of testicle at the bottom of our most sublime feelings and our purest tenderness.
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My friend, you should blow out your candle in order to find your way more clearly.
Denis Diderot