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. Those who have money will display it in every imaginable way. If their ostentation does not exceed their fortune, all will be well. But if their ostentation does exceed their fortune they will ruin themselves. In such a country, the greatest fortunes will vanish in the twinkling of an eye. Those who don’t have money will ruin themselves with vain efforts to conceal their poverty. That is one kind of affluence: the outward sign of wealth for a small number, the mask of poverty for the majority, and a source of corruption for all.
—Denis Diderot
Topics: Money
The blood of Jesus Christ can cover a multitude of sins, it seems to me.
—Denis Diderot
Topics: Christianity
There is only one passion, the passion for happiness.
—Denis Diderot
Topics: Passion
When we know how to read our own hearts, we acquire wisdom of the hearts of others.
—Denis Diderot
Topics: Wisdom
Good music is very close to primitive language.
—Denis Diderot
Topics: Music
Pithy sentences are like sharp nails which force truth upon our memory.
—Denis Diderot
Topics: Proverbial Wisdom, Justice
Do you see this egg? With this you can topple every theological theory, every church or temple in the world.
—Denis Diderot
Topics: Science, Scientists
You risk just as much in being credulous as in being suspicious.
—Denis Diderot
Topics: Danger, Risk
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
Watch out for the fellow who talks about putting things in order! Putting things in order always means getting other people under your control.
—Denis Diderot
Topics: Order
His hands would plait the priests guts, if he had no rope, to strangle kings.
—Denis Diderot
The pit of a theatre is the one place where the tears of virtuous and wicked men alike are mingled.
—Denis Diderot
Topics: Theater
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
There is no kind of harassment that a man may not inflict on a woman with impunity in civilized societies.
—Denis Diderot
Topics: Men & Women, Men, Women, Men and Women
Philosophy is as far separated from impiety as religion is from fanaticism.
—Denis Diderot
Topics: Philosophy
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
Gaiety—a quality of ordinary men. Genius always presupposes some disorder in the machine.
—Denis Diderot
Topics: Disorder, Happiness
The best doctor is the one you run to and can’t find.
—Denis Diderot
Topics: Doctors, Medicine
Patriotism is an ephemeral motive that scarcely ever outlasts the particular threat to society that aroused it.
—Denis Diderot
Topics: Patriotism
It is not human nature we should accuse but the despicable conventions that pervert it.
—Denis Diderot
Topics: Human Nature, Humanity
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
We are far more liable to catch the vices than the virtues of our associates.
—Denis Diderot
Topics: Vice
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
Doctors are always working to preserve our health and cooks to destroy it, but the latter are the more often successful.
—Denis Diderot
Topics: Health
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
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
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
Distance is a great promoter of admiration!.
—Denis Diderot
Topics: Admiration
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
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Voltaire French Philosopher, Author
- Georges Bataille French Essayist, Intellectual
- Marquis de Sade French Writer
- Albert Camus Algerian-born French Philosopher
- Jean-Paul Sartre French Philosopher
- Simone de Beauvoir French Philosopher
- Roland Barthes French Literary Theorist
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau French Philosopher
- Michel de Montaigne French Essayist
- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin French Jesuit Scientist
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