People praise virtue, but they hate it, they run away from it. It freezes you to death, and in this world you've got to keep your feet warm.
Interpretation
This quote highlights the contradiction between society's admiration for virtue and its aversion to the sacrifices that true virtue demands.
Denis Diderot's quote reflects the paradox that while people often extol the value of virtue, they simultaneously resist its practice due to the discomfort and challenges it can impose. He suggests that virtue can be isolating and strenuous, akin to being 'frozen', and in a world where survival and comfort are prioritized, people may choose to abandon virtuous paths to maintain their warmth and humanity.
In practice
During a speech on ethics, one might use this quote to emphasize the struggle between doing what is right and the pressures of societal norms.
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.
Liberties are not given, they are taken.
Experience having long taught me the reasonableness of mutual sacrifices of opinion among those who are to act together for any common object, and the expediency of doing what good we can; when we cannot do all we would wish.
None of our prayers should ever be petitions for our own needs: for this is only another subtle way of trying to put ourselves on the same plane as God β acting as if we had no needs, as if we were not creatures, not dependent on Him.
In 1930s mysteries, all sorts of motives were credible which aren't credible today, especially motives of preventing guilty sexual secrets from coming out. Nowadays, people sell their guilty sexual secrets.
Christ literally walked in our shoes and entered into our affliction. Those who will not help others until they are destitute reveal that Christ's love has not yet turned them into the sympathetic persons the gospel should make them.
What give all that is tragic, whatever its form, the characteristic of the sublime, is the first inkling of the knowledge that the world and life can give no satisfaction, and are not worth our investment in them. The tragic spirit consists in this. Accordingly it leads to resignation.
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