Denis Diderot Doe Quotations

There is no moral precept that does not have something inconvenient about it.

You can be sure that a painter reveals himself in his work as much as and more than a writer does in his.

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.

What a hell of an economic system! Some are replete with everything while others, whose stomachs are no less demanding, whose hunger is just as recurrent, have nothing to bite on. The worst of it is the constrained posture need puts you in. The needy man does not walk like the rest; he skips, slithers, twists, crawls.

Does not vanity itself cease to be blamable, is it not even ennobled, when it is directed to laudable objects, when it confines itself to prompting us to great and generous actions?

Does anyone really know where they're going to?

Whether God exists or does not exist, He has come to rank among the most sublime and useless truths.

Passions destroy more prejudices than philosophy does.