Denis Diderot

Bad company is as instructive as licentiousness. One makes up for the loss of one's innocence with the loss of one's prejudices.

One declaims endlessly against the passions; one imputes all of man's suffering to them. One forgets that they are also the source of all his pleasures.

There is no good father who would want to resemble our Heavenly Father.

We are far more liable to catch the vices than the virtues of our associates.

Evil always turns up in this world through some genius or other.

In order to shake a hypothesis, it is sometimes not necessary to do anything more than push it as far as it will go.

Pithy sentences are like sharp nails which force truth upon our memory.

The decisions of law courts should never be printed: in the long run, they form a counter authority to the law.

Watch out for the fellow who talks about putting things in order! Putting things in order always means getting other people under your control.

When science, art, literature, and philosophy are simply the manifestation of personality they are on a level where glorious and dazzling achievements are possible, which can make a man's name live for thousands of years.

If you want me to believe in God, you must make me touch him.

His hands would plait the priest's guts, if he had no rope, to strangle kings.

Genius is present in every age, but the men carrying it within them remain benumbed unless extraordinary events occur to heat up and melt the mass so that it flows forth.

The pit of a theatre is the one place where the tears of virtuous and wicked men alike are mingled.

All abstract sciences are nothing but the study of relations between signs.

No man has received from nature the right to command his fellow human beings.

Morals are in all countries the result of legislation and government; they are not African or Asian or European: they are good or bad.

The philosopher has never killed any priests, whereas the priest has killed a great many philosophers.

There are things I can't force. I must adjust. There are times when the greatest change needed is a change of my viewpoint.

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!