We are all instruments endowed with feeling and memory. Our senses are so many strings that are struck by surrounding objects and that also frequently strike themselves. – Denis Diderot
No man has received from nature the right to command his fellow human beings. – Denis Diderot
Morals are in all countries the result of legislation and government they are not African or Asian or European: they are good or bad. – Denis Diderot
Our ideas are the offspring of our senses; we are not more able to create the form of a being we have not seen, without retrospect to one we know, than we are able to create a new sense. He whose fancy has conceived an idea of the most beautiful form must have composed it from actual existence. – Henry Fuseli