“We are born weak, we need strength; helpless, we need aid; foolish, we need reason. All that we lack at birth, all that we need when we come to man’s estate, is the gift of education.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau
“Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau
“Every man has the right to risk his own life in order to preserve it. Has it ever been said that a man who throws himself out the window to escape from a fire is guilty of suicide?”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau
“Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau
“The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau
“Insults are the arguments employed by those who are in the wrong.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau
“What wisdom can you find that is greater than kindness?”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau
“Absolute silence leads to sadness. It is the image of death.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau
“I may be no better, but at least I am different.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau
“Religious persecutors are not believers, they are rascals.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau
“Force does not constitute right… obedience is due only to legitimate powers.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau
“Virtue is a state of war, and to live in it we have always to combat with ourselves.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau
“No man has any natural authority over his fellow men.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau
“Plant and your spouse plants with you; weed and you weed alone.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau
“It is unnatural for a majority to rule, for a majority can seldom be organized and united for specific action, and a minority can.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau
“Every man has a right to risk his own life for the preservation of it.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau
“I hate books; they only teach us to talk about things we know nothing about.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau
“Falsehood has an infinity of combinations, but truth has only one mode of being.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau
“When something an affliction happens to you, you either let it defeat you, or you defeat it.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau
“The body politic, as well as the human body, begins to die as soon as it is born, and carries itself the causes of its destruction.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau
“Those that are most slow in making a promise are the most faithful in the performance of it.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau
“Our greatest evils flow from ourselves.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau
“Reading, solitude, idleness, a soft and sedentary life, intercourse with women and young people, these are perilous paths for a young man, and these lead him constantly into danger.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau
“People who know little are usually great talkers, while men who know much say little.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau
“Heroes are not known by the loftiness of their carriage; the greatest braggarts are generally the merest cowards.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau
“The training of children is a profession, where we must know how to waste time in order to save it.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau
“Nature never deceives us; it is we who deceive ourselves.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau
“God made me and broke the mold.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau
“We are born, so to speak, twice over; born into existence, and born into life; born a human being, and born a man.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau
“I have resolved on an enterprise that has no precedent and will have no imitator. I want to set before my fellow human beings a man in every way true to nature; and that man will be myself.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau
“All of my misfortunes come from having thought too well of my fellows.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau
“Take from the philosopher the pleasure of being heard and his desire for knowledge ceases.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau
“I undertake the same project as Montaigne, but with an aim contrary to his own: for he wrote his Essays only for others, and I write my reveries only for myself.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau
“Most nations, as well as people are impossible only in their youth; they become incorrigible as they grow older.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau
“Base souls have no faith in great individuals.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau
“Free people, remember this maxim: we may acquire liberty, but it is never recovered if it is once lost.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau
“The English think they are free. They are free only during the election of members of parliament.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau
“Childhood is the sleep of reason.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau
“Gratitude is a duty which ought to be paid, but which none have a right to expect.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau
“It is too difficult to think nobly when one thinks only of earning a living.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau
“Ordinary readers, forgive my paradoxes: one must make them when one reflects; and whatever you may say, I prefer being a man with paradoxes than a man with prejudices.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau
“Happiness: a good bank account, a good cook, and a good digestion.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau
“No true believer could be intolerant or a persecutor. If I were a magistrate and the law carried the death penalty against atheists, I would begin by sending to the stake whoever denounced another.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau
“Remorse sleeps during prosperity but awakes bitter consciousness during adversity.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau
“I have always said and felt that true enjoyment can not be described.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau
“Our will is always for our own good, but we do not always see what that is.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau
“We should not teach children the sciences; but give them a taste for them.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau
“Although modesty is natural to man, it is not natural to children. Modesty only begins with the knowledge of evil.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau
“You forget that the fruits belong to all and that the land belongs to no one.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau
“We pity in others only the those evils which we ourselves have experienced.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau
“However great a man’s natural talent may be, the act of writing cannot be learned all at once.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau
“It is a mania shared by philosophers of all ages to deny what exists and to explain what does not exist.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau
“O love, if I regret the age when one savors you, it is not for the hour of pleasure, but for the one that follows it.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau
“Do I dare set forth here the most important, the most useful rule of all education? It is not to save time, but to squander it.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau
“Whoever blushes is already guilty; true innocence is ashamed of nothing.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau
“Fame is but the breath of people, and that often unwholesome.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau
“How many famous and high-spirited heroes have lived a day too long?”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau
“Our affections as well as our bodies are in perpetual flux.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau
“Money is the seed of money, and the first guinea is sometimes more difficult to acquire than the second million.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau
“The English are predisposed to pride, the French to vanity.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau
“Take the course opposite to custom and you will almost always do well.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau
“I only see clearly what I remember.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau
“The person who has lived the most is not the one with the most years but the one with the richest experiences.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau
“A feeble body weakens the mind.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau
“To endure is the first thing that a child ought to learn, and that which he will have the most need to know.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau
“We do not know what is really good or bad fortune.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau
“The first step towards vice is to shroud innocent actions in mystery, and whoever likes to conceal something sooner or later has reason to conceal it.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau
“I long remained a child, and I am still one in many respects.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau
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