Top 396 Quotes & Sayings by Jean-Jacques Rousseau - Page 2

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.

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.

Fame is but the breath of people, and that often unwholesome.

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.

I have always said and felt that true enjoyment can not be described.

We do not know what is really good or bad fortune.

Most nations, as well as people are impossible only in their youth; they become incorrigible as they grow older.

To endure is the first thing that a child ought to learn, and that which he will have the most need to know.

The mind grows narrow in proportion as the soul grows corrupt.

Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains.

Reason deceives us; conscience, never.

I would rather be a man of paradoxes than a man of prejudices.

By doing good we become good.

I prefer liberty with danger than peace with slavery.

Do not judge, and you will never be mistaken.

The falsification of history has done more to impede human development than any one thing known to mankind.

Conscience is the voice of the soul, the passions are the voice of the body. Is it astonishing that often these two languages contradict each other, and then to which must we listen? Too often reason deceives us; we have only too much acquired the right of refusing to listen to it; but conscience never deceives us; it is the true guide of man; it is to man what instinct is to the body; which follows it, obeys nature, and never is afraid of going astray.

In all the ills that befall us, we are more concerned by the intention than the result. A tile that falls off a roof may injure us more seriously, but it will not wound us so deeply as a stone thrown deliberately by a malevolent hand. The blow may miss, but the intention always strikes home.

Teach your scholar to observe the phenomena of nature; you will soon rouse his curiosity, but if you would have it grow, do not be in too great a hurry to satisfy this curiosity. Put the problems before him and let him solve them himself. Let him know nothing because you have told him, but because he has learnt it for himself. Let him not be taught science, let him discover it. If ever you substitute authority for reason he will cease to reason; he will be a mere plaything of other people's thoughts.

Plants are shaped by cultivation and men by education. .. We are born weak, we need strength; we are born totally unprovided, we need aid; we are born stupid, we need judgment. Everything we do not have at our birth and which we need when we are grown is given us by education.

Money is the seed of money.

Luxury either comes of riches or makes them necessary; it corrupts at once rich and poor, the rich by possession and the poor by covetousness.

No one is happy unless he respects himself.

Laws are always useful to those who possess and vexatious to those who have nothing.

People who know little are usually great talkers, while men who know much say little. It is plain that an ignorant person thinks everything he does know important, and he tells it to everybody. But a well-educated man is not so ready to display his learning; he would have too much to say, and he sees that there is much more to be said, so he holds his peace.

Do you not know...that a child badly taught is farther from being wise than one not taught at all?

Girls must be thwarted early in life.

The money you have gives you freedom; the money you pursue enslaves you.

Those people who treat politics and morality separately will never understand either of them.

Why should we build our happiness on the opinons of others, when we can find it in our own hearts?

People in their natural state are basically good. But this natural innocence,however, is corrupted by the evils of society.

I have never believed that man's freedom consisted in doing what he wants, but rather in never doing what he does not want to do.

The only moral lesson which is suited for a child--the most important lesson for every time of life--is this: 'Never hurt anybody.

Socrates dies with honor, surrounded by his disciples listening to the most tender words -the easiest death that one could wish to die. Jesus dies in pain, dishonor, mockery, the object of universal cursing - the most horrible death that one could fear. At the receipt of the cup of poison, Socrates blesses him who could not give it to him without tears; Jesus, while suffering the sharpest pains, prays for His most bitter enemies. If Socrates lived and died like a philosopher, Jesus lived and died like a god.

The first person who, having enclosed a plot of land, took it into his head to say this is mine and found people simple enough to believe him was the true founder of civil society. What crimes, wars, murders, what miseries and horrors would the human race have been spared, had some one pulled up the stakes or filled in the ditch and cried out to his fellow men: "Do not listen to this imposter. You are lost if you forget that the fruits of the earth belong to all and the earth to no one!

Civilization is a hopeless race to discover remedies for the evils it produces.

Everything is good as it comes from the hands of the Maker of the world, but degenerates once it gets into the hands of man

The greatest braggarts are usually the biggest cowards.

Social man lives constantly outside himself.

The animals you eat are not those who devour others; you do not eat the carnivorous beasts, you take them as your pattern. You only hunger for the sweet and gentle creatures which harm no one, which follow you, serve you, and are devoured by you as the reward of their service.

Trust your heart rather than your head.

Do not base your life on the judgments of others; first, because they are as likely to be mistaken as you are, and further, because you cannot know that they are telling you their true thoughts.

If I am part of a group of 100 people, do 99 people have the right to sentence me to death, just because they are majority?

Freedom is the power to choose our own chains

Temperance and labor are the two best physicians of man; labor sharpens the appetite, and temperance prevents from indulging to excess

The freedom of Mankind does not lie in the fact that can do what we want, but that we do not have to do that which we do not want.

To be sane in a world of madman is in itself madness.

We are reduced to asking others what we are. We never dare to ask ourselves.

In the strict sense of the term, a true democracy has never existed, and never will exist.

One can buy anything with money except morality.

It is to law alone that men owe justice and liberty. It is this salutary organ, of the will of all which establishes in civil rights the natural equality between men. It is this celestial voice which dictates to each citizen the precepts of public reason, and teaches him to act according to the rules of his own judgment and not to behave inconsistently with himself. It is with this voice alone that political leaders should speak when. they command.

It is manifestly contrary to the law of nature, however defined, that a handful of people should gorge themselves with superfluities while the hungry majority goes in need of necessities.

I love idleness. I love to busy myself about trifles, to begin a hundred things and not finish one of them, to come and go as my fancy bids me, to change my plan every moment, to follow a fly in all its circlings, to try and uproot a rock to see what is underneath, eagerly to begin a ten-years' task to give it up after ten minutes: in short, to fritter away the whole day inconsequentially and incoherently, and to follow nothing but the whim of the moment.

All kinds of frankness and honesty are terrible crimes in the eyes of society.

Liberty is obedience to the law which one has laid down for oneself

There are always four sides to a story: your side, their side, the truth and what really happened.

Once you teach people to say what they do not understand, it is easy enough to get them to say anything you like.

Teach by doing whenever you can, and only fall back upon words when doing it is out of the question.

The bigger a state becomes the more liberty diminishes.

The money that we possess is the instrument of liberty, that which we lack and strive to obtain is the instrument of slavery.