Denis Diderot Quotes

“One drinks up a flattering lie in great gulps, whereas a bitter truth one sips drop by drop”

― Denis Diderot, Rameau's Nephew

topic:truth lie

“it would be better to know nothing than to know so little, so imperfectly”

― Denis Diderot, Rameau's Nephew

topic:knowledge ignorance

“The more ancient an institution, the greater the number of its idioms; the worse the suffering in a particular age, the more the idioms multiply.”

― Denis Diderot, Rameau's Nephew

topic:stupidity

“The important point is that you and I should exist, and that we should be you and me. Let everything else get on as best it can. The best order of things, as I see it, is the one that includes me; to hell with the most perfect of worlds, if I'm...”

― Denis Diderot, Rameau's Nephew

topic:world existence

“If your little savage were left to fend for himself, if he kept all his natural artlessness and then united the minimal reasoning power of an infant with the violent passions of a man of thirty, he'd strangle his father and bed his mother.”

― Denis Diderot, Rameau's Nephew

topic:education violence

“There you have the effect of segregation. Man is born for life in society; separate him, isolate him, and his ideas will go to pieces, his character will go sour, a hundred ridiculous affections will spring up in his heart, extravagant notions...”

― Denis Diderot, The Nun

topic:society madness

“it's better to write of great deeds than to perform trivial ones”

― Denis Diderot, Rameau's Nephew

topic:writing action greatness

“There is a way out of a forest, there is none out of a cloister; a man is free in the forest but he is a slave in the cloister. It may well be that greater strength of character is needed for standing up to solitude than to poverty, for if...”

― Denis Diderot, The Nun

topic:loneliness misery

“Every human virtue and every vice has been fashionable for a while and then unfashionable.”

― Denis Diderot, Jacques the Fatalist and his Master

topic:virtue

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