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Denis Diderot quotes

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“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
“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
“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
“it would be better to know nothing than to know so little, so imperfectly” Denis Diderot, Rameau's Nephew
“Every human virtue and every vice has been fashionable for a while and then unfashionable.” Denis Diderot, Jacques the Fatalist and his Master
“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
“it's better to write of great deeds than to perform trivial ones” Denis Diderot, Rameau's Nephew
“One drinks up a flattering lie in great gulps, whereas a bitter truth one sips drop by drop” Denis Diderot, Rameau's Nephew
“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

Related topics

ignorance action existence violence vice tradition institutions truth world knowledge education stupidity madness lie loneliness society virtue writing greatness misery

Related sources

Rameau's Nephew (6)
The Nun (2)
Jacques the Fatalist and his Master (1)