Denis Diderot

"The happiness of society is the true end of government."

"It is from the midst of this putrefaction that the rotten trunk of fanaticism springs up."

"Gratitude is a duty which ought to be paid, but which none have a right to expect."

"Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils."

"We call that fire of the eyes only a poetic figure. But I maintain that it is literal truth."

"The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires."

"I have only ever loved one person in my life, and it is myself."

"Mysteries are not necessarily miracles."

"Nature has placed mankind under two sovereign masters, pleasure and pain."

"The role of an interesting man is to listen."

"I believe no more in the god of the theologians than I do in Venus or Jupiter."

"Man will continue to commit atrocities as long as he continues to believe things on the basis of inadequate evidence."

"Those who make the worst use of their time are the first to complain of its shortness."

"Beware of the anger of a patient man."

"In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing."

"The less we deserve good fortune the more we hope for it."

"Eccentricity is not, as dull people would have us believe, a sign of madness. It often signifies new points of view and hence is the indication of genius."

"The most important of our laws is the law of posterity."

"I want to die as I have lived, in complete independence."

"Hell is others."

"Music is the passion of my life, and I believe I would be lost without it."

"The tyranny of custom and prejudice is the greatest enemy of truth."

"One should no more deplore the fact that people attack one's opinions than one deplores the fact that the air resists the wing of a plane."

"The artist's task is to save the soul of mankind."

"To protect the child, the woman, and the weak is the function of education."

"In the end, we only regret the chances we did not take."

"Philosophy either makes one wise or foolish; it has no middle ground."

"The beautiful is in nature, and it is encountered under the most diverse forms of ugliness."

"In every honest man there is a poet."

"Crime and infamy are preferable to the humiliation of obedience."