Top 396 Quotes & Sayings by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Explore popular quotes and sayings by a French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
Last updated on November 21, 2024.
Our will is always for our own good, but we do not always see what that is.
You forget that the fruits belong to all and that the land belongs to no one.
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?
The person who has lived the most is not the one with the most years but the one with the richest experiences.
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.
Insults are the arguments employed by those who are in the wrong.
It is too difficult to think nobly when one thinks only of earning a living.
Those that are most slow in making a promise are the most faithful in the performance of it.
Money is the seed of money, and the first guinea is sometimes more difficult to acquire than the second million.
It is a mania shared by philosophers of all ages to deny what exists and to explain what does not exist.
Religious persecutors are not believers, they are rascals.
No man has any natural authority over his fellow men.
I long remained a child, and I am still one in many respects.
How many famous and high-spirited heroes have lived a day too long?
I only see clearly what I remember.
We should not teach children the sciences; but give them a taste for them.
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.
Our greatest evils flow from ourselves.
Take from the philosopher the pleasure of being heard and his desire for knowledge ceases.
Childhood is the sleep of reason.
Force does not constitute right... obedience is due only to legitimate powers.
We pity in others only the those evils which we ourselves have experienced.
It is unnatural for a majority to rule, for a majority can seldom be organized and united for specific action, and a minority can.
Happiness: a good bank account, a good cook, and a good digestion.
Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains.
Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.
The training of children is a profession, where we must know how to waste time in order to save it.
Virtue is a state of war, and to live in it we have always to combat with ourselves.
Free people, remember this maxim: we may acquire liberty, but it is never recovered if it is once lost.
Our affections as well as our bodies are in perpetual flux.
A feeble body weakens the mind.
Plant and your spouse plants with you; weed and you weed alone.
Absolute silence leads to sadness. It is the image of death.
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.
Gratitude is a duty which ought to be paid, but which none have a right to expect.
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.
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.
We are born, so to speak, twice over; born into existence, and born into life; born a human being, and born a man.
All of my misfortunes come from having thought too well of my fellows.
Every man has a right to risk his own life for the preservation of it.
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.
The English are predisposed to pride, the French to vanity.
When something an affliction happens to you, you either let it defeat you, or you defeat it.
What wisdom can you find that is greater than kindness?
Nature never deceives us; it is we who deceive ourselves.
People who know little are usually great talkers, while men who know much say little.
Falsehood has an infinity of combinations, but truth has only one mode of being.
Heroes are not known by the loftiness of their carriage; the greatest braggarts are generally the merest cowards.
Base souls have no faith in great individuals.
The English think they are free. They are free only during the election of members of parliament.
God made me and broke the mold.
Although modesty is natural to man, it is not natural to children. Modesty only begins with the knowledge of evil.
Remorse sleeps during prosperity but awakes bitter consciousness during adversity.
Whoever blushes is already guilty; true innocence is ashamed of nothing.
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.
The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless.
I may be no better, but at least I am different.
Take the course opposite to custom and you will almost always do well.
I hate books; they only teach us to talk about things we know nothing about.
However great a man's natural talent may be, the act of writing cannot be learned all at once.
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