A biography for Denis Diderothasn’t been written yet.
“אינני יודע מהם עקרונות אם לא כללים שאנו מכתיבים לאחרים לתועלתנו.”
“ההיסטוריה אינה מספקת לנו אלא דוגמאות של הפרות הסכמי שלום, של מלחמות לא צודקות ואכזריות, של שדות חרוכים ושל ערים שהפכו לעיי חורבות.”
“האם תדעו מיהם הורים רעים? אלה ששכחו את נעוריהם.”
“To attempt the destruction of our passions is the height of folly. What a noble aim is that of the zealot who tortures himself like a madman in order to desire nothing, love nothing, feel nothing, and who, if he succeeded, would end up a complete monster!”
“From fanaticism to barbarism is only one step.”
“All things must be examined, debated, investigated without exception and without regard for anyone's feelings.”
“The best doctor is the one you run to and can't find.”
“The most dangerous madmen are those created by religion, and ... people whose aim is to disrupt society always know how to make good use of them on occasion.”
“Pithy sentences are like sharp nails which force truth upon our memory.”
“People stop thinking when they cease to read.”
“The God of the Christians is a father who makes much of his apples, and very little of his children.”
“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.”
“When science, art, literature, and philosophy are simply the manifestation of personality they are on a level where glorious and dazzling achievements are possible, which can make a man's name live for thousands of years.”
“Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.”
“One swallows the lie that flatters, but sips the bitter truth drop by drop.”
“You live as if you were destined to live forever, no thought of your frailty ever enters your head, of how much time has already gone by you take no heed. You squander time as if you drew from a full and abundant supply, so all the while that day which you bestow on some person or thing is perhaps your last. You have all the fears of mortals and all the desires of immortals… What foolish forgetfulness of mortality to defer wise resolutions to the fiftieth or sixtieth year, and to intend to begin life at a point to which few have attained.”
“You have to make it happen.”
“Only a very bad theologian would confuse the certainty that follows revelation with the truths that are revealed. They are entirely different things.”
“We are all instruments endowed with feeling and memory. Our senses are so many strings that are struck by surrounding objects and that also frequently strike themselves.”
“Scepticism is the first step towards truth.”