Top 23 Quotes & Sayings by Jean-Baptiste Rousseau
Explore popular quotes and sayings by a French dramatist Jean-Baptiste Rousseau.
Last updated on November 8, 2024.
Were there a people of gods, their government would be democratic. So perfect a government is not for men.
Each State can have for enemies only other States, and not men; for between things disparate in nature there can be no real relation.
As soon as public service ceases to be the chief business of the citizens, and they would rather serve with their money than with their persons, the State is not far from its fall.
If you have but a single ruler, you lie at the discretion of a master who has no reason to love you: and if you have several, you must bear at once their tyranny and their divisions.
Astronomy was born of superstition; eloquence of ambition, hatred, falsehood, and flattery; geometry of avarice; physics of an idle curiosity; and even moral philosophy of human pride. Thus the arts and sciences owe their birth to our vices.
It should be remembered that the foundation of the social contract is property; and its first condition, that every one should be maintained in the peaceful possession of what belongs to him.
Every artist loves applause. The praise of his contemporaries is the most valuable part of his recompense.
They must know but little of mankind who can imagine that, after they have been once seduced by luxury, they can ever renounce it.
Men always love what is good or what they find good; it is in judging what is good that they go wrong.
Readiness of speech is often inability to hold the tongue.
Who does not sufficiently hate vice, does not sufficiently love virtue.
The less reasonable a cult is, the more men seek to establish it by force.
The Catholic must adopt the decision handed down to him; the Protestant must learn to decide for himself.
Old men grasp more at life than babies, and leave it with a much worse grace than young people. It is because all their labours having been for this life, they perceive at last their trouble lost.
Youth is the time to study wisdom; old age is the time to practice it.
Do we wish men to be virtuous? Then let us begin by making them love their country.
Truth is no road to fortune.
The vine that has been made to bear fruit in the spring, withers and dies before autumn.
The right of conquest has no foundation other than the right of the strongest.
The man who has lived the longest is not he who has spent the greatest number of years, but he who has had the greatest sensibility of life.
What man loses by the social contract is his natural liberty and an unlimited right to everything he tries to get and succeeds in getting; what he gains is civil liberty and the proprietorship of all he possesses.
To reign by opinion, begin by trampling it under your feet.
Coercion created slavery, the cowardice of the slaves perpetuated it.
Related Authors
Alan Bennett Quotes
English
Dramatist
Alexandre Dumas Quotes
French
Dramatist
Anton Chekhov Quotes
Russian
Dramatist
David Mamet Quotes
American
Dramatist
Edward Albee Quotes
American
Dramatist
Eugene Ionesco Quotes
French
Dramatist
Friedrich Schiller Quotes
German
Dramatist
Harold Pinter Quotes
English
Dramatist
Jean Racine Quotes
French
Dramatist
John Heywood Quotes
English
Dramatist
Jules Renard Quotes
French
Dramatist
Lillian Hellman Quotes
American
Dramatist
Pierre Corneille Quotes
French
Dramatist
Tennessee Williams Quotes
American
Dramatist
Tom Stoppard Quotes
English
Dramatist
Zora Neale Hurston Quotes
American
Dramatist