262 Quotes by Denis Diderot

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

If you disturb the colors of the rainbow, the rainbow is no longer beautiful.

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 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 its shape and comfort.

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

There is only one virtue, justice; only one duty, to be happy; only one corollary, not to overvalue life and not to fear death.

Gaiety is a quality of ordinary men. Genius always presupposes some disorder in the machine.

It is raining bombs on the house of the Lord. I go in fear and trembling lest one of these terrible bombers gets into difficulties.

Whatever dressing one gives to mushrooms, to whatever sauces our Apiciuses put them, they are not really good but to be sent back to the dungheap where they are born.