262 Quotes by Denis Diderot

Happiest are the people who give most happiness to others.

If one of them appears in company, he’s a grain of yeast which ferments and gives back to everyone some part of his natural individuality. He shakes things up. He agitates us.

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

The best order of things, as I see it, is the one that includes me; to hell with the most perfect of worlds, if I’m not part of it.

They mistake the first manifestations of a developing sexual nature for the voice of God calling them to Himself; and it is precisely when nature is inciting them that they embrace a fashion of life contrary to nature’s wish.

Because, without knowing what is written up above, none of us knows what we want or what we are doing, and we follow our whims which we call reason, or our reason which is often nothing but a dangerous whim which sometimes turns out well, sometimes badly.

Every man has his dignity. I’m willing to forget mine, but at my own discretion and not when someone else tells me to.

All things must be examined, debated, investigated without exception and without regard for anyone’s feelings.

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