Frases de Denis Diderot

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“El hombre más feliz es el que hace la felicidad del mayor número de sus semejantes.”

“El agradecimiento es una carga, y todos tienden a librarse de ella.”

“El que te habla de los defectos de los demás, con los demás hablará de los tuyos.”

“Engullimos de un sorbo la mentira que nos adula y bebemos gota a gota la verdad que nos amarga.”

“La ignorancia está más cerca de la verdad que el prejuicio.”

“La indiferencia hace sabios, y la insensibilidad, monstruos.”

“Si la razón es un don del cielo, y otro tanto puede decirse de la fe, el cielo nos ha hecho dos presentes incompatibles y contradictorios.”

“Se habla sin cesar contra las pasiones. Se las considera la fuente de todo mal humano, pero se olvida que también lo son de todo placer.”

“El trabajo tiene, entre otras ventajas, la de acortar los días y prolongar la vida.”

“Una idiotez común es creer que el que tiene más clientes es el más hábil.”

“Se me debe exigir que busque la verdad, pero no que la encuentre.”

“Del fanatismo a la barbarie sólo media un paso.”

“El filósofo nunca ha matado a un sacerdote, mientras que el sacerdote sí ha matado a muchos filósofos”

“Los médicos trabajan para conservarnos la salud, y los cocineros para destruirla, pero estos últimos están más seguros de lograr su intento.”

“El mártir espera la muerte; el fanático corre a buscarla.”

“El primer paso hacia la filosofía es la incredulidad.”

“Es tan arriesgado creerlo todo, como creer nada.”

“Hay hombres que se creen sabios cuando su locura dormita.”

“Mis ideas son mis rameras.”

“No arrepentirse ni hacer reproches a los demás, son los pasos de la sabiduría.”

“No basta con hacer el bien: hay que hacerlo bien.”

“Todos quieren tener amigos, pero ninguno quiere serlo.”

“No lo confunde con la probabilidad; él toma por verdadero lo que es verdadero, por falso lo que es falso, por dudoso lo que es dudoso y probable lo que solo es probable. Él hace más, y aquí tienes una gran perfección del filósofo: cuando no tiene ninguna razón por la cual juzgar, sabe cómo vivir en suspensión de juicio ... El espíritu filosófico es, entonces, un espíritu de observación y exactitud, que relaciona todo con principios verdaderos ...”

“Nacer, vivir y morir es cambiar de formas.”

“Decir que el hombre es una mezcla de fuerza y de debilidad, de luz y de ceguera, no es hacer su proceso: es definirlo.”

“La sabiduría no es otra cosa que la ciencia de la felicidad.”

“El filósofo forma sus principios a partir de una infinidad de observaciones particulares.”

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

“We are constantly railing against the passions; we ascribe to them all of man’s afflictions, and we forget that they are also the source of all his pleasures”

“Happiest are the people who give most happiness to others.”

“Scepticism is the first step towards truth.”

“A nation which thinks that it is belief in God and not good law which makes people honest does not seem to me very advanced.”

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

“I am wholly yours - you are everything to me; we will sustain each other in all the ills of life it may please fate to inflict upon us; you will soothe my troubles; I will comfort you in yours.”

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

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

“Oh! how near are genius and madness! Men imprison them and chain them, or raise statues to them.”

“If your little savage were left to himself and be allowed to retain all his ignorance, he would in time join the infant’s reasoning to the grown man’s passion, he would strangle his father and sleep with his mother.”

“I have often seen an actor laugh off the stage, but I don’t remember ever having seen one weep.”

“Wandering in a vast forest at night, I have only a faint light to guide me. A stranger appears and says to me: "My friend, you should blow out your candle in order to find your way more clearly." This stranger is a theologian. — Number VIII”

“There is no kind of harassment that a man may not inflict on a woman with impunity in civilized societies.”

“The decisions of law courts should never be printed: in the long run, they form a counterauthority to the law.”

“How easy it is to tell tales!”

“Go further, and require each of them to make a contribution: you will see how many things are still missing, and you will be obliged to get the assistance of a large number of men who belong to different classes, priceless men, but to whom the gates of the academies are nonetheless closed because of their social station. All the members of these learned societies are more than is needed for a single object of human science; all the societies together are not sufficient for a science of man in general.”

“Genius is present in every age, but the men carrying it within them remain benumbed unless extraordinary events occur to heat up and melt the mass so that it flows forth.”

“The blood of Jesus Christ can cover a multitude of sins, it seems to me.”

“The general interest of the masses might take the place of the insight of genius if it were allowed freedom of action.”

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

“How did they meet? By chance, like everybody … Where did they come from? From the nearest place. Where were they going? Do we know where we are going?”

“There is only one passion, the passion for happiness.”

“We are far more liable to catch the vices than the virtues of our associates.”

“Superstition is more injurious to God than atheism.”

“The best doctor is the one you run for and can't find.”

“To prove the Gospels by a miracle is to prove an absurdity by something contrary to nature.”

“The following general definition of an animal: a system of different organic molecules that have combined with one another, under the impulsion of a sensation similar to an obtuse and muffled sense of touch given to them by the creator of matter as a whole, until each one of them has found the most suitable position for it shape and comfort.”

“Evil always turns up in this world through some genius or other.”