262 Quotes by Denis Diderot

La poe sie veutquelque chose d'e norme, debarbare et de sauvage. Poetry needs something on the scale of the grand, the barbarous, the savage.

There are cats and cats.

There is no true sovereign except the nation; there can be no true legislator except the people.

If there are one hundred thousand damned souls for one saved soul, the devil has always the advantage without having given up his son to death.

A thing is not proved just because no one has ever questioned it. What has never been gone into impartially has never been properly gone into. Hence scepticism is the first step toward truth. It must be applied generally, because it is the touchstone.

Passions destroy more prejudices than philosophy does.

The bad gives rise to the good, the good inspires the better, the better produces the excellent, the excellent is followed by the bizarre

Only God and some few rare geniuses can keep forging ahead into novelty.

The philosopher forms his principles on an infinity of particular observations...He does not confuse truth with plausibility...he takes for truth what is true, for false what is false, for doubtful what is doubtful, and probable what is probable...The philosophical spirit is thus a spirit of observation and accuracy.