262 Quotes by Denis Diderot

Descartes said: "I think, therefore I am." Helvetius wants to say: "I feel, therefore I want to feel pleasantly." I prefer Hobbes who claims that in order to draw a conclusion which takes us somewhere, we must say, "I feel, I think, I judge; therefore, a part of organized matter like me is capable of feeling, thinking, and judging.

The world is the house of the strong.

The best doctor is the one you run for and can't find

Although a man may wear fine clothing, if he lives peacefully; and is good, self-possessed, has faith and is pure; and if he does not hurt any living being, he is a holy man.

The God of the Christians is a father who makes much of his apples, and very little of his children.

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

Shakespeare's fault is not the greatest into which a poet may fall. It merely indicates a deficiency of taste.

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!

How easy it is to tell tales!