"There are things I can't force. I must adjust. There are times when the greatest change needed is a change of my viewpoint."

Denis Diderot Philosophy See all quotes by Denis Diderot →

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“Il y a un peu de testicule au fond de nos sentiments les plus sublimes et de notre tendresse la plus épurée.”

“In any country where talent and virtue produce no advancement, money will be the national god. Its inhabitants will either have to possess money or make others believe that they do. Wealth will be the highest virtue, poverty the greatest vice. Those who have money will display it in every imaginable way. If their ostentation does not exceed their fortune, all will be well. But if their ostentation does exceed their fortune they will ruin themselves. In such a country, the greatest fortunes will vanish in the twinkling of an eye. Those who don't have money will ruin themselves with vain efforts to conceal their poverty. That is one kind of affluence: the outward sign of wealth for a small number, the mask of poverty for the majority, and a source of corruption for all.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

Resonant Thoughts

"To make everything yield to custom would be to do the greatest injustice. Were the judgments of mankind correct, custom would be regulated by the good. But it is often far otherwise in point of fact; …"

— John Calvin

Religion

#justice

"There is a kind of travesty of humanity over there. Montgomery knows about it, for he interferes in their affairs. He has trained one or two of them to our service. He's ashamed of it, but I believe h…"

— H. G. Wells

Literature1866–1946

#life

"I believe there is no permanent greatness to a nation except it be based upon morality. I do not care for military greatness or military renown. I care for the condition of the people among whom I liv…"

— John Bright

Politics1811–1889

#happiness

"For nature is not merely present, but is implanted within things, distant from none; naught is distant from her except the false, and that which existed never and nowhere—nullity. And while the outer …"

— Giordano Bruno

Science1548–1600

#philosophy