Who really said it

Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest

Q: Did Denis Diderot say "Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest"?

No. Diderot did write about strangling kings with a priest's insides. What he wrote, in his 1772 poem Les Éleuthéromanes, is: 'Et ses mains ourdiraient les entrailles du prêtre, / Au défaut d'un cordon pour étrangler les rois' — and his hands would plait the priest's entrails, for want of a rope, to strangle kings. No last king. No last priest. No 'men will never be free'. That neater, more famous form comes out of the afterlife of Jean Meslier's Testament — and appears in summaries other people made of it, not in Meslier's own manuscript.

Nobody, in this wording — Diderot wrote something narrower Unknown Composite slogan · nearest real text: Diderot, 1772

Disputed Free to reuse

Diderot did write about strangling kings with a priest’s insides. What he wrote, in his 1772 poem Les Éleuthéromanes, is: ‘Et ses mains ourdiraient les entrailles du prêtre, / Au défaut d’un cordon pour étrangler les rois’ — and his hands would plait the priest’s entrails, for want of a rope, to strangle kings. No last king. No last priest. No ‘men will never be free’. That neater, more famous form comes out of the afterlife of Jean Meslier’s Testament — and appears in summaries other people made of it, not in Meslier’s own manuscript.

Last verified 21 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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“Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest” a slogan with no located author. Diderot's real line, Les Éleuthéromanes (1772): "Et ses mains ourdiraient les entrailles du prêtre, / Au défaut d'un cordon pour étrangler les rois."

The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to Denis Diderot. Use the credit shown above instead.

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Evoking the world of Denis Diderot — French Enlightenment philosopher, editor of the Encyclopédie. Theme: "Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

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Provenance

The source

Work: Les Éleuthéromanes, Denis Diderot
Written: 1772 · circulated in the Correspondance littéraire, 1 March 1772
First printed: La Décade philosophique, 30 September 1796
The other name: Jean Meslier (1664–1729), Testament
Language of source: French

Et ses mains ourdiraient les entrailles du prêtre, Au défaut d'un cordon pour étrangler les rois. Diderot, Les Éleuthéromanes, 1772

Diderot's actual French. Read it carefully and the differences are all load-bearing: the verb is ourdiraient — would plait, would weave, as one plaits a rope — the mood is conditional, and there is no last of anything. It is an image of improvised violence, not a precondition for human freedom.

Les Éleuthéromanes — the poem and its publication history

How we traced it

Start with Diderot, because he really did write a version. Les Éleuthéromanes — roughly ‘the freedom-maniacs’ — dates from 1772 and went round in manuscript through Grimm’s Correspondance littéraire; it was not printed until 1796, twelve years after Diderot’s death. His couplet is conditional and unnumbered: a man with no rope would use a priest’s entrails, to strangle kings the poem ↗.
Now the version everybody quotes. A tighter French couplet — ‘Et des boyaux du dernier prêtre / Serrons le cou du dernier roi’ — is credited to Diderot in editions of La Harpe’s Cours de littérature ancienne et moderne, but it is not the text of his poem. It is the slogan form, and it is where the ‘last king, last priest’ symmetry enters the two versions side by side ↗.
And the sentiment is older than Diderot. Jean Meslier, a country priest who left a book-length denunciation of religion to be found after his death in 1729, reports a man who wished the great and the noble hanged and strangled with the guts of the priests — reported as somebody else’s wish, not his own programme. The polished ‘last king / last priest’ line attributed to Meslier appears in abstracts of his Testament written by other hands, Voltaire’s among them, rather than in the manuscript Meslier ↗.

Public domain

Everything here is free to reuse. Diderot died in 1784 and Meslier in 1729, so the French is public domain worldwide, as are the nineteenth-century printings and the old English versions of the couplet. The English wording that actually circulates — ‘men will never be free until…’ — has no identifiable translator, which means nobody can claim it either, though it also means you cannot cite it to anyone. Modern scholarly translations and editorial matter, including recent English editions of Meslier’s Testament, are their own copyright. This is not legal advice.

This reflects the original work, which is public domain. If your exact English wording comes from a specific modern translation, that translation may itself still be under copyright — check the edition you quote.

Fact-check

Untangling who wrote what

Three texts get merged into one quotation here, and pulling them apart is the whole job: a real Diderot couplet, a punchier couplet Diderot did not write, and a dead priest’s manuscript that says something related but less quotable.

Real, and different Les Éleuthéromanes, 1772

‘Et ses mains ourdiraient les entrailles du prêtre, / Au défaut d’un cordon pour étrangler les rois.’ Conditional mood, plural kings, no ‘last’ anything, and no claim about freedom being impossible until it happens. It is an image, not a manifesto the poem ↗.

Credited to Diderot, but not from his poem 'dernier roi, dernier prêtre'

‘Et des boyaux du dernier prêtre / Serrons le cou du dernier roi.’ This is the version with the symmetry everyone remembers, and it turns up attached to Diderot’s name in nineteenth-century literary histories rather than in his text.

The real ancestor, at one remove reported, not proposed

Meslier’s posthumous Testament reports a man who wished the great and the nobility hanged and strangled with the guts of priests. He is quoting somebody else’s wish. The famous first-person ‘I would like the last of the kings strangled with the guts of the last priest’ comes from abstracts of his book made by other people — Voltaire produced one — not from the manuscript Meslier ↗.

No translator, no first appearance unsourced

‘Men will never be free until…’ is not a translation of either French couplet — it adds a claim neither makes, that freedom is conditional on the killing. Nobody has located who first wrote it in English or when.

Sometimes credited too no

Voltaire published an Extrait of Meslier in 1762 and thereby put the sentiment into circulation, which is probably why his name attaches. He did not write the line, and he heavily edited Meslier into something he found more congenial.

The famous English is nobody’s. Diderot’s real 1772 couplet is narrower and conditional; the tidy ‘last king, last priest’ form descends from summaries of Jean Meslier written by other people compare the texts ↗.

Context

Why it resonates

It is the most efficient sentence the eighteenth century produced about throne and altar: two institutions, one rope, and the rope is made of one of them. The doubling — last king, last priest — is what makes it stick, and it is precisely the part nobody can source.

It also travels because it is designed to be shouted. Diderot’s own lines have the hesitation of poetry in them, a subjunctive and a rope that is missing; the slogan strips all that out. Which is a fair summary of what happens to Enlightenment writing when it becomes revolutionary property.

Diderot wrote 'kings'. Somebody else wrote 'the last king' — and that is the word everyone remembers.

Four versions, in order

Meslier, before 1729: reports a man wishing the great and the nobility hanged and strangled with the guts of the priests. Reported, not proposed.

Voltaire, 1762: publishes an Extrait of Meslier, edited to suit himself, and the sentiment enters general circulation.

Diderot, 1772: ‘Et ses mains ourdiraient les entrailles du prêtre, / Au défaut d’un cordon pour étrangler les rois’ — in a poem not printed until 1796.

Nineteenth century: the slogan couplet ‘des boyaux du dernier prêtre… le cou du dernier roi’ circulates under Diderot’s name.

Modern English: ‘Men will never be free until…’ — no translator, no date, and an extra claim smuggled in.

Paris, May 1968: students update it again, swapping in bureaucrats and capitalists. The form has outlived every author it has had.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Freedom Power

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Les Éleuthéromanesfr.wikipedia.org

Diderot’s poem: composition in 1772, manuscript circulation, and first printing in 1796.

Diderot — the entrails couplet, sourcedwist.info

The real French beside the slogan version, with the La Harpe attribution and the Meslier background.

Jean Meslieren.wikipedia.org

The priest whose posthumous Testament is the real ancestor — and what he actually wrote.

Denis Diderot — quotationsen.wikiquote.org

Carries the Éleuthéromanes lines in French with two English renderings.

Les Éleuthéromanes, with historical commentarygallica.bnf.fr

A digitised nineteenth-century edition of the poem at the Bibliothèque nationale de France.

Credited — and half right

Why it gets pinned on Diderot

Denis Diderot

1713–1784 · French Enlightenment philosopher, editor of the Encyclopédie

Denis Diderot spent twenty-five years editing the Encyclopédie under censorship, was jailed once for his writing, and kept his most incendiary work unpublished in his lifetime — Rameau’s Nephew, D’Alembert’s Dream and this poem all reached print after he died. That habit is exactly why quotations attach to him so easily: much of the corpus circulated in manuscript before it was fixed in type, so wordings drifted, and a man with a genuine reputation for anticlerical fury is a plausible home for any anticlerical line going spare.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source — Chicago

No source for the circulating English. Nearest genuine text: Diderot, Denis. Les Éleuthéromanes, 1772; first printed La Décade philosophique, 30 September 1796. Compare Jean Meslier, Testament (before 1729).

MLA (9th ed.)

Diderot, Denis. “Les Éleuthéromanes.” 1772. The popular English wording is unsourced.

APA (7th ed.)

Diderot, D. (1772). Les Éleuthéromanes. [The circulating English wording is unsourced.]

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