Denis Diderot Order Quotations

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!

In order to shake a hypothesis, it is sometimes not necessary to do anything more than push it as far as it will go.

Watch out for the fellow who talks about putting things in order! Putting things in order always means getting other people under your control.

My friend, you should blow out your candle in order to find your way more clearly.

If reason be a gift of Heaven, and we can say as much of faith, Heaven has certainly made us two gifts not only incompatible, but in direct contradiction to each other. In order to solve the difficulty, we are compelled to say either that faith is a chimera or that reason is useless.

If you disturb the colors of the rainbow, the rainbow is no longer beautiful.

What is this world? A complex whole, subject to endless revolutions. All these revolutions show a continual tendency to destruction; a swift succession of beings who follow one another, press forward, and vanish; a fleeting symmetry; the order of a moment. I reproached you just now with estimating the perfection of things by your own capacity; and I might accuse you here of measuring its duration by the length of your own days.

What is a monster? A being whose survival is incompatible with the existing order.

In order to get as much fame as one's father one has to much more able than he.

No man has received from nature the right to give orders to others. Freedom is a gift from heaven, and every individual of the same species has the right to enjoy it as soon as he is in enjoyment of his reason.

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.