- Lived:
- 1713–1784 · Langres and Paris, with one winter in St. Petersburg
- Tradition:
- French Enlightenment; editor-general of the Encyclopédie; materialist philosopher of the locked drawer
- The Big Idea:
- Knowledge, organized and shared, can change the way a whole civilization thinks — and underneath it all, we are sensitive matter: nature thinking about itself.
- In their words:
- "Our aim is to collect the knowledge scattered over the face of the earth... so that our descendants, becoming better instructed, may become at the same time more virtuous and happier."
- If you remember one thing:
- He spent twenty years dragging the most dangerous publishing project of his century past censors, bans, and betrayals — and locked his own most dangerous books in a drawer, addressed to a future that would finally be ready for them.