Denis Diderot (1713–84) was a French philosopher, playwright, and novelist. He is best known as the editor of the Encyclopédie (1751–72,) an influential publication of the Age of Enlightenment.
Born in Langres, Compagne, Diderot was trained by the Jesuits at home and in Paris. He then abandoned the priesthood as a career and studied law. In 1734, Diderot decided to seek his fortune by writing. For ten years, he earned his living by translating English works and tutoring the children of wealthy families. He became a friend of Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
Diderot’s Pensées Philosophiques (1746; Philosophical Thoughts, 1916) was burned by the Parlement of Paris in 1746. In 1749 he was imprisoned for his Lettre surles aveugles (1749; An Essay on Blindness, 1750,) an irreligious writing.
In 1748, Diderot was encouraged to edit a translation of Ephraim Chambers’s Cyclopaedia (1727.) He extended the scope of the Encyclopédie and, with mathematician Jean d’Alembert, enlisted many contributors such as Voltaire.
As a philosopher, Diderot advanced from Christianity through deism to atheism. His books On the Interpretation of Nature (1754) and D’Alembert’s Dream (1769) disclose his scientific materialism. Jacques the Fatalist (1796) and Rameau’s Nephew (1761–62) illuminate his determinism. Diderot also wrote plays, and art and literary criticism.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Denis Diderot
Ignorance is less remote from the truth than prejudice.
—Denis Diderot
Topics: Prejudice
It is said that desire is a product of the will, but the converse is in fact true: will is a product of desire.
—Denis Diderot
Topics: Desires, Desire
The decisions of law courts should never be printed: in the long run, they form a counter authority to the law.
—Denis Diderot
Topics: Lawyers, Law, Authority
Patriotism is an ephemeral motive that scarcely ever outlasts the particular threat to society that aroused it.
—Denis Diderot
Topics: Patriotism
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
Topics: Freedom
Justice is the first virtue of those who command, and stops the complaints of those who obey.
—Denis Diderot
Topics: Leaders, Justice, Leadership
Only a very bad theologian would confuse the certainty that follows revelation with the truths that are revealed. They are entirely different things.
—Denis Diderot
Topics: Religion
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.
—Denis Diderot
Topics: Tyranny
When we know how to read our own hearts, we acquire wisdom of the hearts of others.
—Denis Diderot
Topics: Wisdom
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, dicebox in hand, shaking the dice.
—Denis Diderot
Topics: Gambling
You risk just as much in being credulous as in being suspicious.
—Denis Diderot
Topics: Risk, Danger
The general interest of the masses might take the place of the insight of genius if it were allowed freedom of action.
—Denis Diderot
The best doctor is the one you run to and can’t find.
—Denis Diderot
Topics: Medicine, Doctors
Do you see this egg? With this you can topple every theological theory, every church or temple in the world.
—Denis Diderot
Topics: Scientists, Science
Philosophy is as far separated from impiety as religion is from fanaticism.
—Denis Diderot
Topics: Philosophy
All abstract sciences are nothing but the study of relations between signs.
—Denis Diderot
Morals are in all countries the result of legislation and government; they are not African or Asian or European: they are good or bad.
—Denis Diderot
Topics: Morality, Morals
Virtue is praised, but hated. People run from it, for it is ice-cold and in this world you have to keep your feet warm.
—Denis Diderot
Topics: Virtue
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
Topics: Feelings
The following general definition of an animal: a system of different organic molecules that have combined with one another, under the impulsion of a sensation similar to an obtuse and muffled sense of touch given to them by the creator of matter as a whole, until each one of them has found the most suitable position for its shape and comfort.
—Denis Diderot
Topics: Animals
We swallow greedily any lie that flatters us, but we sip only little by little at a truth we find bitter.
—Denis Diderot
The blood of Jesus Christ can cover a multitude of sins, it seems to me.
—Denis Diderot
Topics: Christianity
Distance is a great promoter of admiration!.
—Denis Diderot
Topics: Admiration
I like better for one to say some foolish thing upon important matters than to be silent. That becomes the subject of discussion and dispute, and the truth is discovered.
—Denis Diderot
Topics: Silence
The philosopher has never killed any priests, whereas the priest has killed a great many philosophers.
—Denis Diderot
Topics: Science, Philosophers, Philosophy
In order to shake a hypothesis, it is sometimes not necessary to do anything more than push it as far as it will go.
—Denis Diderot
Topics: Assumptions, Theory
Gaiety—a quality of ordinary men. Genius always presupposes some disorder in the machine.
—Denis Diderot
Topics: Disorder, Happiness
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
Topics: Revolution, Revolutions, Revolutionaries
It is the man who is cool and collected, who is master of his countenance, his voice, his actions, his gestures, of every part, who can work upon others at his pleasure.
—Denis Diderot
Topics: Self-Control
What has not been examined impartially has not been well examined. Skepticism is therefore the first step toward truth.
—Denis Diderot
Topics: Trust
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
Topics: Superstition
To attempt the destruction of our passions is the height of folly. What a noble aim is that of the zealot who tortures himself like a madman in order to desire nothing, love nothing, feel nothing, and who, if he succeeded, would end up a complete monster!
—Denis Diderot
Topics: Poverty
We swallow with one gulp the lie that flatters us, and drink drop by drop the truth which is bitter to us.
—Denis Diderot
Topics: Flattery
I have often seen an actor laugh off the stage, but I don’t remember ever having seen one weep.
—Denis Diderot
Topics: Acting, Actors
Impenetrable in their dissimulation, cruel in their vengeance, tenacious in their purposes, unscrupulous as to their methods, animated by profound and hidden hatred for the tyranny of man—it is as though there exists among them an ever-present conspiracy toward domination, a sort of alliance like that subsisting among the priests of every country.
—Denis Diderot
Topics: Women
Black-letter record of the ages.
—Denis Diderot
People praise virtue, but they hate it, they run away from it. It freezes you to death, and in this world you’ve got to keep your feet warm.
—Denis Diderot
Topics: Virtues, Virtue
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
Topics: Divorce
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
Topics: Reason, Instincts
There is no kind of harassment that a man may not inflict on a woman with impunity in civilized societies.
—Denis Diderot
Topics: Men and Women, Men & Women, Women, Men
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