Jean-Jacques Rousseau famous quotes

I am not made like any of those I have seen. I venture to believe that I am not made like any of those who are in existence. If I am not better, at least I am different.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#Believe #Being Different #Venture

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?
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#People #Majority #Groups

Free people, remember this maxim: we may acquire liberty, but it is never recovered if it is once lost.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#Freedom #People #Liberty

I may be no better, but at least I am different.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#Different #May

Every man has a right to risk his own life for the preservation of it.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#Life #Philosophical #Men

A feeble body weakens the mind.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#Mind #Body

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.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#Sweet #Philosophical #Animal

The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#Art #Philosophical #Reality

Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#Inspirational #Motivational #Freedom

I prefer liberty with danger than peace with slavery.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#Freedom #Political #Liberty

We must powder our wigs; that is why so many poor people have no bread.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#People #Wigs #Bread

Do not judge, and you will never be mistaken.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#Justice #Judging #Social Justice

Or, rather, let us be more simple and less vain.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#Simple #Vanity #Vain

Take the course opposite to custom and you will almost always do well.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#Philosophical #Opposites #Risk

I believed that I was approaching the end of my days without having tasted to the full any of the pleasures for which my heart thirsted...without having ever tasted that passion which, through lack of an object, was always suppressed. ...The impossibility of attaining the real persons precipitated me into the land of chimeras; and seeing nothing that existed worthy of my exalted feelings, I fostered them in an ideal world which my creative imagination soon peopled with beings after my own heart.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#Real #Passion #Heart

Although modesty is natural to man, it is not natural to children. Modesty only begins with the knowledge of evil.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#Children #Men #Evil

Gratitude is a duty which ought to be paid, but which none have a right to expect.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#Gratitude #Philosophical #Inspirational Christmas

Those that are most slow in making a promise are the most faithful in the performance of it.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#Life #Faith #Philosophical

Nature never deceives us; it is we who deceive ourselves.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#Motivational #Trust #Nature

I hate books; they only teach us to talk about things we know nothing about.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#Hate #Book #Philosophical

Falsehood has an infinity of combinations, but truth has only one mode of being.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#Truth #Philosophical #Infinity

God made me and broke the mold.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#Mold #Broke #Made

Religious persecutors are not believers, they are rascals.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#Religious #Believer

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

#Causes #Body #Politics

Whoever blushes is already guilty; true innocence is ashamed of nothing.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#Innocence #Guilty #Ashamed

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

#Men #Two #Physicians

Nothing is less in our power than the heart, and far from commanding we are forced to obey it.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#Heart #Power

Our greatest misfortunes come to us from ourselves.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#Misfortunes

I hate books, for they only teach people to talk about what they don't understand.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#Hate #Book #People

I feel an indescribable ecstasy and delirium in melting, as it were, into the system of being, in identifying myself with the whole of nature..
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#Melting #Delirium #Ecstasy

Civilization is a hopeless race to discover remedies for the evils it produces.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#Race #Civilization #Evil

In truth, laws are always useful to those with possessions and harmful to those who have nothing; from which it follows that the social state is advantageous to men only when all possess something and none has too much.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#Men #Law #Too Much

To be sane in a world of madman is in itself madness.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#World #Madness #Madmen

Fame is but the breath of people, and that often unwholesome.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#Philosophical #People #Fame

The English think they are free. They are free only during the election of members of parliament.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#Freedom #Thinking #Election

There are times when I am so unlike myself that I might be taken for someone else of an entirely opposite character.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#Taken #Character #Opposites

Watch a cat when it enters a room for the first time. It searches and smells about, it is not quiet for a moment, it trusts nothing until it has examined and made acquaintance with everything.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#Cat #Smell #Rooms

Innocence is ashamed of nothing.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#Innocence #Ashamed

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

#Political #Majority #Minorities

The English are predisposed to pride, the French to vanity.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#Pride #Vanity #Nationalism

The word ‘slavery’ and ‘right’ are contradictory, they cancel each other out. Whether as between one man and another, or between one man and a whole people, it would always be absurd to say: "I hereby make a covenant with you which is wholly at your expense and wholly to my advantage; I will respect it so long as I please and you shall respect it as long as I wish.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#Men #Long #People

Happiness: a good bank account, a good cook, and a good digestion.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#Inspirational #Life #Motivational

You forget that the fruits belong to all and that the land belongs to no one.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#Philosophical #Land #Environmental

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!
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#War #Believe #Simple

I may not be better than other people, but at least I'm different.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#People #Different #May

Living is not breathing but doing.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#Life #Breathing

To discover the rules of society that are best suited to nations, there would need to exist a superior intelligence, who could understand the passions of men without feeling any of them, who had no affinity with our nature but knew it to the full, whose happiness was independent of ours, but who would nevertheless make our happiness his concern, who would be content to wait in the fullness of time for a distant glory, and to labour in one age to enjoy the fruits in another. Gods would be needed to give men laws.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#Independent #Passion #Men

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

#Life #Time #Philosophical

It is too difficult to think nobly when one thinks only of earning a living.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#Life #Business #Philosophical

What wisdom can you find that is greater than kindness?
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#Inspirational #Wisdom #Kindness

What good would it be to possess the whole universe if one were its only survivor?
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#Survivor #Universe

People who know little are usually great talkers, while men who know much say little.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#Inspirational #Life #Humorous

Insults are the arguments employed by those who are in the wrong.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#Comeback #Insult #Argument

You are worried about seeing him spend his early years in doing nothing. What! Is it nothing to be happy? Nothing to skip, play and run around all day long? Never in his life will he be so busy again.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#Happiness #Running #Play

The strongest is never strong enough to be always the master, unless he transforms strength into right, and obedience into duty.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#Strength #Strong #Enough

I perceive God everywhere in His works. I sense Him in me; I see Him all around me.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#Faith #Perceive

Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains. Those who think themselves the masters of others are indeed greater slaves than they.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#Peace #Men #Thinking

The training of children is a profession, where we must know how to waste time in order to save it.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#Children #Philosophical #Order

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

#Heart #Should

When a man dies he clutches in his hands only that which he has given away during his lifetime.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#Men #Hands #Poverty

Freedom is the power to choose our own chains
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#Chains

...in respect of riches, no citizen shall ever be wealthy enough to buy another, and none poor enough to be forced to sell himself.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#Citizens #Riches #Enough

Virtue is a state of war, and to live in it we have always to combat with ourselves.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#War #Dignity #Virtue

There is no evildoer who could not be made good for something.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#Made

In any case, frequent punishments are a sign of weakness or slackness in the government. There is no man so bad that he cannot be made good for something. No man should be put to death, even as an example, if he can be left to live without danger to society.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#Men #Weakness #Example

The problem is to find a form of association which will defend and protect with the whole common force the person and goods of each associate, and in which each, while uniting himself with all, may still obey himself alone, and remain as free as before.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#Government #Uniting #May

Truth is an homage that the good man pays to his own dignity.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#Men #Good Man #Pay

He who has the base necessities of life should pay nothing; taxation on him who has a surplus may, if need be; extend to everything beyond necessities.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#Needs #Taxation #May

Let it not, therefore, be said that the Sovereign is not subject to the laws of his State; since the contrary is a true proposition of the right of nations, which flattery has sometimes attacked but good princes have always defended as the tutelary divinity of their dominions. How much more legitimate is it to say with the wise Plato, that the perfect felicity of a kingdom consists in the obedience of subjects to their prince, and of the prince to the laws, and in the laws being just and constantly directed to the public good!
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#Wise #Plato #Law

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
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#Country #War #Men

The French, for example, are a contemptible nation.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#Example

To live is not breathing it is action.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#Life #Breathing #Action

Women speak at an earlier age, more easily, and more agreeably than men; they are accused also of speaking more; this is as it should be, and I willingly change the reproach into a eulogy.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#Men #Eulogy #Age

Taste is, so to speak, the microscope of the judgment.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#Taste #Speak #Judgment

To abstain that we may enjoy is the epicurianism of reason.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#May #Eating #Reason

God is intelligent; but in what manner? Man is intelligent by the act of reasoning, but the supreme intelligence lies under no necessity to reason. He requires neither premise nor consequences; nor even the simple form of a proposition. His knowledge is purely intuitive. He beholds equally what is and what will be. All truths are to Him as one idea, as all places are but one point, and all times one moment.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#Lying #Knowledge #Intelligent

Whatever may be our natural talents, the art of writing is not acquired all at once.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#Art #Writing #May

Posterity is always just.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#Reputation #Posterity

Remorse sleeps in the atmosphere of prosperity.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#Sleep #Atmosphere #Prosperity

A man who is not a fool can rid himself of every folly except vanity.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#Men #Vanity #Fool

It has always pleased me to read while eating if I have no companion; it gives me the society I lack. I devour alternately a page and a mouthful; it is as though my book were dining with me.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#Food #Book #Giving

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

#Hero #Character #Would Be

The majesty of the Scriptures strikes me with admiration, as the purity of the gospel has its influence on my heart.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#Heart #Majesty #Scripture

Reason deceives us; conscience, never.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#Deceiving #Reason #Conscience

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.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#Philosophy #Light #Doubt

He thinks like a philosopher, but governs like a king.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#Kings #Philosophy #Thinking

Liberty may be gained, but can never be recovered.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#Liberty #May

Too much apparatus, designed to guide us in experiments and to supplement the exactness of our senses, makes us neglect to use those senses...The more ingenious our apparatus, the coarser and more unskillful are our senses. We surround ourselves with tools and fail to use those which nature has provided every one of us.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#Technology #Tools #Use

He certainly deserved the name better than those who had assumed it.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#Dog #Names

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

#Democracy #Existence #Term

A child who passes through many hands in turn, can never be well brought up. At every change he makes a secret comparison, which continually tends to lessen his respect for those who control him, and with it their authority over him. If once he thinks there are grown-up people with no more sense than children the authority of age is destroyed and his education is ruined.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#Children #Thinking #Hands

Ah, that is a perfume in which I delight; when they roast coffee near my house, I hasten to open the door to take in all the aroma.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#Coffee #Doors #House

By doing good we become good.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#Evil #Good And Evil #Doing Good

There exists one book, which, to my taste, furnishes the happiest treatise of natural education. What then is this marvelous book? Is it Aristotle? Is it Pliny, is it Buffon? No-it is Robinson Crusoe.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#Education #Book #Buffon

Rather suffer an injustice than commit one.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#Suffering #Injustice #Commit

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

#Education #Done #Development

Supreme happiness consists in self-content.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#Happiness #Self

An intelligent being, is the active principle of all things. One must have renounced all common sense to doubt it, and it is a waste of time to try to prove such self evident truth.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#Philosophy #Intelligent #Self

To renounce liberty is to renounce being a man, to surrender the rights of humanity and even its duties. For he who renounces everything no indemnity is possible. Such a renunciation is incompatible with man's nature; to remove all liberty from his will is to remove all morality from his acts.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#Men #Rights #Humanity

A man says what he knows, a woman says what will please.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#Women #Men #Please