Do you see this egg? With this you can topple every theological theory, every church or temple in the world.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that a simple idea or object can challenge and disrupt established beliefs and institutions.
Denis Diderot's quote highlights the power of questioning and the potential for even the smallest things to challenge grand religious and philosophical constructs. The mention of an egg symbolizes new beginnings and the fragility of outdated beliefs, suggesting that radical change can be initiated by something seemingly insignificant.
In practice
During a discussion on religion, this quote can be used to emphasize the need for critical thinking.
The arbitrary rule of a just and enlightened prince is always bad. His virtues are the most dangerous and the surest form of seduction: they lull a people imperceptibly into the habit of loving, respecting, and serving his successor, whoever that successor may be, no matter how wicked or stupid.
This root [the potato], no matter how much you prepare it, is tasteless and floury. It cannot pass for an agreeable food, but it supplies a food sufficiently abundant and sufficiently healthy for men who ask only to sustain themselves. The potato is criticized with reason for being windy, but what matters windiness for the vigorous organisms of peasants and laborers?
There are three principal means of acquiring knowledge... observation of nature, reflection, and experimentation. Observation collects facts; reflection combines them; experimentation verifies the result of that combination.
In order to get as much fame as one's father one has to much more able than he.
All abstract sciences are nothing but the study of relations between signs.
What is a monster? A being whose survival is incompatible with the existing order.
Today, no walls can separate humanitarian or human rights crises in one part of the world from national security crises in another. What begins with the failure to uphold the dignity of one life all too often ends with a calamity for entire nations.
A man does not have to go and find where his eyes are in order to see. The heart is there, always open to you, if you care to enter it, always supporting your movements, although you may be unaware of it. It is perhaps more correct to say that the Self is the Heart. Really the Self is the centre and is everywhere aware of itself as the Heart or Self-awareness.
If my desire is possible, it means the system is already letting something else through.
Ignorance of the law is no excuse in any country. If it were, the laws would lose their effect, because it can always be pretended.
Tragedy, for me, is not a conflict between right and wrong, but between two different kinds of right.
Hours later the blank sheet still stared at me, and I beat my fist against the desk in fury and fustration, striking it so hard my hand bled. That is how heavy a secret can become. It can make blood flow easier than ink.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.