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.
When human affairs are so ordered that there is no recognition of God, there is a belittling of man. That is why, in the final analysis, worship and law cannot be completely separated from each other. God has a right to a response from man, to man himself, and where that right of God totally disappears, the order of law among men is dissolved, because there is no cornerstone to keep the whole structure together.
The world is a fabric we weave daily on the great looms of information, discussions, films, books, gossip, little anecdotes.
I am the passenger, I stay under glass. I look through my window so bright, I see the stars come out tonight. I see the bright and hollow sky, over the city's ripped backsides and everything looks good tonight.
If women are not perceived to be fully within the structures of power, surely it is power that we need to redefine rather than women?
I have tried drugs and a little of everything else, and there is nothing in the world more soul-satisfying than having the kingdom of God building inside you and growing.
Let the ruling classes tremble at a communist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Workingmen of all countries, unite!
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