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?
Interpretation
The potato, while tasteless, is a vital sustenance for the hardworking, illustrating the value of utility over taste.
Denis Diderot's quote highlights the potato's role as a fundamental source of nourishment, especially for laborers. Despite its lack of flavor and the criticism it receives for being 'windy,' the potato offers substantial health benefits and sustenance to those who require energy for their demanding work. This reflects a broader philosophical perspective on the merits of practicality and utility in life, where something may not be pleasing to the senses but serves an important purpose.
In practice
In a speech about food security, one might reference Diderot's quote to emphasize the importance of staple foods.
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.
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.
What is a monster? A being whose survival is incompatible with the existing order.
Dhikr (remembrance of Allah) is to the heart as water is to a fish; see what happens to a fish when it is taken out of water
His [Erwin Schrödinger's] private life seemed strange to bourgeois people like ourselves. But all this does not matter. He was a most lovable person, independent, amusing, temperamental, kind and generous, and he had a most perfect and efficient brain.
I knew that the moment the great governing spirit strikes the blow to divide all humanity into just two opposing factions, I would be on the side of the common people.
Man makes holy what he believes as he makes beautiful what he loves.
In any closet, you can find it, if it is too small, or out of style, or there is just one of it where there should be two
Christians aren't people who never sin or always do the right thing. We're people who live in continual repentance.
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