Gaiety is a quality of ordinary men. Genius always presupposes some disorder in the machine.
Interpretation
Genius often stems from imperfections, while joy is a trait found in everyone.
Denis Diderot's quote suggests that while ordinary people can experience joy and gaiety, genius is often accompanied by a certain level of chaos or disorder. This implies that those who think outside the box or create something extraordinary may demonstrate an unconventional approach or mindset that deviates from the norm.
In practice
In a motivational talk about creativity at a workshop.
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?
Do you see this egg? With this you can topple every theological theory, every church or temple in the world.
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.
My primary process of perceiving is muscular and visual.
We cannot get from anyone else the things we need to fill the endless terrible need, not to be dissolved, not to sink back into sand, heat, broom, air, thinnest air. And so we revolve around each other and our dreams collide. Look out the window in any weather. We are part of all that glamour, drama, change, and should not be ashamed.
My own veneration for other faiths is the same as that for my own faith; therefore no thought of conversion is possible
The pleasantest things in the world are pleasant thoughts, and the great art of life is to have as many of them as possible.
Yes, ISIL is a terror-based insurgent army that seeks to establish a Caliphate, but the group's actual end goal is far from political: ISIL believes that, through jihad, it will bring about the Day of Judgment. This is not true Islam.
The question of whether there exists a Creator and Ruler of the Universe has been answered in the affirmative by some of the highest intellects that have ever existed.
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