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.
Men of patriarchal cultures have been committing heinous acts in the name of their God ever since they created a god for themselves. It seems that the earlier, goddess-oriented, nature-centered religions were far less cruel.
Capitalism may even be identical with the restraint, or at least a rational tempering, of this irrational impulse. But capitalism is identical with the restraint, or at least a rational tempering, of this irrational impulse. But capitalism is identical with the pursuit of profit, and forever renewed profit, by means of continuous, rational, capitalistic enterprise.
They tell him that there is no why, since the moment simply is and since all of them are trapped in the moment, like bugs in amber.
It would have been difficult to design a path out of communism worse than the one that has been followed.
Who is the most favored of God? He from whom the greatest good comes to His creatures.
Of my conception I know only what you know of yours. It occurred in darkness and I was unconsenting... By some bleak alchemy what had been mere unbeing becomes death when life is mingled with it.
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