Top 396 Quotes & Sayings by Jean-Jacques Rousseau - Page 7

One must choose between making a man or a citizen, for one cannot make both at the same time.

To study men, we must look close by; to study man, we must learn to look afar; if we are to discover essential characteristics, we must first observe differences.

As evening approached, I came down from the heights of the island, and I liked then to go and sit on the shingle in some secluded spot by the lake; there the noise of the waves and the movement of the water, taking hold of my senses and driving all other agitation from my soul, would plunge me into delicious reverie in which night often stole upon me unawares.

The mechanism she employs is much more powerful than ours, for all her levers move the human heart.

The infant, on opening his eyes, ought to see his country, and to the hour of his death never lose sight of it.

To renounce freedom is to renounce one's humanity, one's rights as a man and equally one's duties.

Whoever blushes confesses guilt, true innocence never feels shame.

I remembered the way out suggested by a great princess when told that the peasants had no bread: "Well, let them eat cake".

Love, known to the person by whom it is inspired, becomes more bearable.

Men and women are made for each other, but their mutual dependence differs in degrees; man is dependent on woman through his desires; woman is dependent on man through her desires and also through her needs; he could do without her better than she can do without him. She cannot fulfill her purpose in life without his aid, without his goodwill, without his respect.....Nature herself has decreed that woman, both for herself and her children, should be at the mercy of man s judgment.

Equality is deemed by many a mere speculative chimera, which can never be reduced to practice. But if the abuse is inevitable, does it follow that we ought not to try at least to mitigate it? It is precisely because the force of things tends always to destroy equality that the force of the legislature must always tend to maintain it.

To try to conceal our own heart is a bad means to read that of others.

In Genoa, the word, libertas can be read on the front of prisons and on the fetters of galley-slaves. The application of this motto is fine and just.

To live is not to breathe but to act. It is to make use of our organs, our senses, our faculties, of all the parts of ourselves which give us the sentiment of our existence. The man who has lived the most is not he who has counted the most years but he who has most felt life.

There is no folly of which a man who is not a fool cannot get rid except vanity; of this nothing cures a man except experience of its bad consequences, if indeed anything can cure it.

Taste is, so to speak, the microscope of the judgment.

We lose all that time which we might employ better.

Yes, if the life and death of Socrates are those of a wise man, the life and death of Jesus are those of a god.

He who blushes is already guilty.

Days of absence, sad and dreary, Clothed in sorrow's dark array, - Days of absence, I am weary; She I love is far away.

To renounce liberty is to renounce being a man, to surrender the rights of humanity and even its duties.

There is not a single ill-doer who could not be turned to some good.

Abstract truth is the eye of reason.

I also realized that the philosophers, far from ridding me of my vain doubts, only multiplied the doubts that tormented me and failed to remove any one of them. So I chose another guide and said, Let me follow the Inner Light; it will not lead me so far astray as others have done, or if it does it will be my own fault, and I shall not go so far wrong if I follow my own illusions as if I trusted to their deceits.

If there were a nation of Gods, it would govern itself democratically. A government so perfect is not suited to men.

War then, is a relation - not between man and man but between state and state and individuals are enemies only accidentally not as men, nor even as citizens but as soldiers not as members of their country, but as its defenders

The truths of the Scriptures are so marked and inimitable, that the inventor would be more of a miraculous character than the hero.

Physical evils destroy themselves, or they destroy us.

The general will is always right.

The opportunity of making happy is more scarce than we imagine; the punishment of missing it is, never to meet with it again; and the use we make of it leaves us an eternal sentiment of satisfaction or repentance.

But remain the teacher of the young teachers. Advise and direct us, and we will be ready to learn. I will have need of you as long as I live.

Remorse sleeps during a prosperous period but wakes up in adversity.

Supreme happiness consists in self-content; that we may gain this self-content, we are placed upon this earth and endowed with freedom.

There is a period of life when we go back as we advance. [Fr., Il est un terme de la vie au-dela duquel en retrograde en avancant.]

I will say little of the importance of a good education; nor will I stop to prove that the current one is bad. Countless others have done so before me, and I do not like to fill a book with things everybody knows. I will note that for the longest time there has been nothing but a cry against the established practice without anyone taking it upon himself to propose a better one. The literature and the learning of our age tend much more to destruction than to edification.

A born king is a very rare being.