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.
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What has not been examined impartially has not been well examined. Skepticism is therefore the first step toward truth.
—Denis Diderot
Topics: Trust
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
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
There are three principal means of acquiring knowledge available to us: observation of nature, reflection, and experimentation. Observation collects facts; reflection combines them; experimentation verifies the result of that combination. Our observation of nature must be diligent, our reflection profound, and our experiments exact. We rarely see these three means combined; and for this reason, creative geniuses are not common.
—Denis Diderot
Topics: Knowledge
Gaiety—a quality of ordinary men. Genius always presupposes some disorder in the machine.
—Denis Diderot
Topics: Disorder, Happiness
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: Instincts, Reason
I have often seen an actor laugh off the stage, but I don’t remember ever having seen one weep.
—Denis Diderot
Topics: Actors, Acting
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: Virtue, Virtues
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
The pit of a theatre is the one place where the tears of virtuous and wicked men alike are mingled.
—Denis Diderot
Topics: Theater
Pithy sentences are like sharp nails which force truth upon our memory.
—Denis Diderot
Topics: Justice, Proverbial Wisdom
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
Distance is a great promoter of admiration!.
—Denis Diderot
Topics: Admiration
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, Authority, Law
Ignorance is less remote from the truth than prejudice.
—Denis Diderot
Topics: Prejudice
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
The best doctor is the one you run to and can’t find.
—Denis Diderot
Topics: Medicine, Doctors
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
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
Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest
—Denis Diderot
Topics: Government
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
We are far more liable to catch the vices than the virtues of our associates.
—Denis Diderot
Topics: Vice
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
His hands would plait the priests guts, if he had no rope, to strangle kings.
—Denis Diderot
You risk just as much in being credulous as in being suspicious.
—Denis Diderot
Topics: Danger, Risk
Good music is very close to primitive language.
—Denis Diderot
Topics: Music
Philosophy is as far separated from impiety as religion is from fanaticism.
—Denis Diderot
Topics: Philosophy
Justice is the first virtue of those who command, and stops the complaints of those who obey.
—Denis Diderot
Topics: Leadership, Justice, Leaders
All abstract sciences are nothing but the study of relations between signs.
—Denis Diderot
Only passions, great passions, can elevate the soul to great things.
—Denis Diderot
Topics: Enthusiasm, Passion, Romance
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