Denis Diderot (1713 – 1784)
French philosopher and chief editor of the historic project to produce L'Encyclopédie.
Patriotism is an ephemeral motive that scarcely ever outlasts the particular threat to society that aroused it.
It is said that desire is a product of the will, but the converse is in fact true: will is a product of desire.
The first promise exchanged by two beings of flesh was at the foot of a rock that was crumbling into dust; they took as witness for their constancy a sky that is not the same for a single instant; everything changed in them and around them, and they believed their hearts free of vicissitudes. O children! always children!
The following general definition of an animal: a system of different organic molecules that have combined with one another, under the impulsion of a sensation similar to an obtuse and muffled sense of touch given to them by the creator of matter as a whole, until each one of them has found the most suitable position for it shape and comfort.
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.
It is not human nature we should accuse but the despicable conventions that pervert it.
We are constantly railing against the passions; we ascribe to them all of man’s afflictions, and we forget that they are also the source of all his pleasures … But what provokes me is that only their adverse side is considered … and yet only passions, and great passions, can raise the soul to great things. Without them there is no sublimity, either in morals or in creativity. Art returns to infancy, and virtue becomes small-minded.
We are far more liable to catch the vices than the virtues of our associates.