Denis Diderot
Was a French philosopher, art critic, and writer, best known for serving as co-founder, chief editor, and contributor to the Encyclopédie along with Jean le Rond d'Alembert. He was a prominent figure during the Age of Enlightenment.
- Disturbances in society are never more fearful than when those who are stirring up the trouble can use the pretext of religion to mask their true designs.
- The possibility of divorce renders both marriage partners stricter in their observance of the duties they owe to each other. Divorces help to improve morals and to increase the population.
- There are three principal means of acquiring knowledge... observation of nature, reflection, and experimentation. Observation collects facts; reflection combines them; experimentation verifies the result of that combination.
- No man has received from nature the right to command his fellow human beings.
- It is not human nature we should accuse but the despicable conventions that pervert it.
- You have to make it happen.
- When superstition is allowed to perform the task of old age in dulling the human temperament, we can say goodbye to all excellence in poetry, in painting, and in music.
- Poetry must have something in it that is barbaric, vast and wild.
- Power acquired by violence is only a usurpation, and lasts only as long as the force of him who commands prevails over that of those who obey.
- The best doctor is the one you run to and can't find.
