Jean-Jacques Rousseau Quotes

However great a man's natural talent may be, the act of writing cannot be learned all at once.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
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 a fire is guilty of suicide?
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
He who is the most slow in making a promise is the most faithful in the performance of it.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
All that time is lost which might be better employed.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
He who is the most slow in making a promise is the most faithful in the performance of it.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
All that time is lost which might be better employed.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
A feeble body weakens the mind.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Little privations are easily endured when the heart is better treated than the body.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Man was born free and everywhere he is in shackles.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Whoever blushes is already guilty true innocence is ashamed of nothing.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
To write a good love letter you ought to begin without knowing what you mean to say and to finish without knowing what you have written.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
What wisdom can you find that is greater than kindness?
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Happiness: a good bank account a good cook and a good digestion.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Gratitude is a duty which ought to be paid but which none have a right to expect.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
I may not amount to much but at least I am unique.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
The happiest is he who suffers the least pain the most miserable he who enjoys the least pleasure.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Fame is but the breath of the people and that often unwholesome.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
If the life and death of Socrates were those of a sage the life and death of Jesus were those of a God.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
There is not a single ill-doer who could not be turned to some good.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
I hate books they teach us only to talk about what we do not know.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
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
Whether the woman shares the man's passion or not, whether she is willing or unwilling to satisfy it, she always repulses him and defends herself, though not always with the same vigour, and therefore not always with the same success.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
As she put it, she knew of nothing so ravishing as having a child whom she could whip whenever she was in a bad mood.("The Queen Fantasque")
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Entirely taken up by the present, I could remember nothing; I had no distinct notion of myself as a person, nor had I the least idea of what had just happened to me. I did not know who I was, nor where I was; I felt neither pain, fear, nor anxiety. I watched my blood flowing as I might have watched a stream, without even thinking that the blood had anything to do with me. I felt throughout my whole being such a wonderful calm, that whenever I recall this feeling I can find nothing to compare with it in all the pleasures that stir our lives.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
I would rather be a man of paradoxes than a man of prejudices.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Civilization is a hopeless race to discover remedies for the evils it produces.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
We cannot teach children the danger of lying to men without feeling as men, the greater danger of lying to children.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Ah,' thought the king sadly, shrugging his shoulders, "I see clearly that if one has a crazy wife, one cannot avoid being a fool.'("Queen Fantasque")
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Ancient politicians talked incessantly about morality and virtue; our politicians talk only about business and money. One will tell you that in a particular country a man is worth the sum he could be sold for in Algiers; another, by following this calculation, will find countries where a man is worth nothing, and others where he is worth less than nothing. They assess men like herds of livestock. According to them, a man has no value to the State apart from what he consumes in it. Thus one Sybarite would have been worth at least thirty Lacedaemonians. Would someone therefore hazard a guess which of these two republics, Sparta or Sybaris, was overthrown by a handful of peasants and which one made Asia tremble?
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Now it is easy to perceive that the moral part of love is a factitious sentiment, engendered by society, and cried up by the women with great care and address in order to establish their empire, and secure command to that sex which ought to obey.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
[T]he man who meditates is a depraved animal.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Virtue is a state of war, and to live in it we have always to combat with ourselves.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Hatred, as well as love, renders its votaries credulous.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Children are taught to look down on their nurses (nannies), to treat them as mere servants. When their task is completed the child is withdrawn or the nurse is dismissed. Her visits to her foster-child are discouraged by a cold reception. After a few years the child never sees her again. The mother expects to take her place, and to repair by her cruelty the results of her own neglect. But she is greatly mistaken; she is making an ungrateful foster-child, not an affectionate son; she is teaching him ingratitude, and she is preparing him to despise at a later day the mother who bore him, as he now despises his nurse.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
...there is no real advance in human reason, for what we gain in one direction we lose in another; for all minds start from the same point, and as the time spent in learning what others have thought is so much time lost in learning to think for ourselves, we have more acquired knowledge and less vigor of mind. Our minds like our arms are accustomed to use tools for everything, and to do nothing for themselves.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
As soon as any man says of the affairs of the State "What does it matter to me?" the State may be given up for lost.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
How much more reasonable is it to say with the sage Plato, that the perfect happiness of a state consists in the subjects obeying their prince, the prince obeying the laws, and the laws being equitable and always directed to the good of the public?
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
I ask: which of the two, civil or natural life, is more likely to become insufferable to those who live it? We see about us practically no people who do not complain about their existence; many even deprive themselves of it to the extent they are able, and the combination of divine and human laws is hardly enough to stop this disorder.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
O Fabricius! What would your great soul have thought, if to your own misfortune you had been called back to life and had seen the pompous face of this Rome saved by your efforts and which your honourable name had distinguished more than all its conquests? 'Gods,' you would have said, 'what has happened to those thatched roofs and those rustic dwelling places where, back then, moderation and virtue lived? What fatal splendour has succeeded Roman simplicity? What is this strange language? What are these effeminate customs? What do these statues signify, these paintings, these buildings? You mad people, what have you done? You, masters of nations, have you turned yourself into the slaves of the frivolous men you conquered? Are you now governed by rhetoricians? Was it to enrich architects, painters, sculptors, and comic actors that you soaked Greece and Asia with your blood? Are the spoils of Carthage trophies for a flute player? Romans, hurry up and tear down these amphitheatres, break up these marbles, burn these paintings, chase out these slaves who are subjugating you, whose fatal arts are corrupting you. Let other hands distinguish themselves with vain talents. The only talent worthy of Rome is that of conquering the world and making virtue reign there. When Cineas took our Senate for an assembly of kings, he was not dazzled by vain pomp or by affected elegance. He did not hear there this frivolous eloquence, the study and charm of futile men. What then did Cineas see that was so majestic? O citizens! He saw a spectacle which your riches or your arts could never produce, the most beautiful sight which has ever appeared under heaven, an assembly of two hundred virtuous men, worthy of commanding in Rome and governing the earth.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
The first man, who, after enclosing a piece of ground, 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. How many crimes, how many wars, how many murders, how many misfortunes and horrors, would that man have saved the human species, who pulling up the stakes or filling up the ditches should have cried to his fellows: Be sure not to listen to this imposter; you are lost, if you forget that the fruits of the earth belong equally to us all, and the earth itself to nobody!
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Princes always are always happy to see developing among their subjects the taste for agreeable arts and for superfluities which do not result in the export of money. For quite apart from the fact that with these they nourish that spiritual pettiness so appropriate for servitude, they know very well that all the needs which people give themselves are so many chains binding them. When Alexander wished to keep the Ichthyophagi dependent on him, he forced them to abandon fishing and to nourish themselves on foods common to other people. And no one has been able to subjugate the savages in America, who go around quite naked and live only from what their hunting provides. In fact, what yoke could be imposed on men who have no need of anything?
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Liberty is like those solid and tasty foods or those full-bodied wines which are appropriate for nourishing and strengthening robust constitutions that are used to them, but which overpower, ruin and intoxicate the weak and delicate who are not suited for them.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Political writers argue in regard to the love of liberty with the same philosophy that philosophers do in regard to the state of nature; by the things they see they judge of things very different which they have never seen, and they attribute to men a natural inclination to slavery, on account of the patience with which the slaves within their notice carry the yoke; not reflecting that it is with liberty as with innocence and virtue, the value of which is not known but by those who possess them, though the relish for them is lost with the things themselves. I know the charms of your country, said Brasidas to a satrap who was comparing the life of the Spartans with that of the Persepolites; but you can not know the pleasures of mine.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Even the soberest judged it requisite to sacrifice one part of their liberty to ensure the other, as a man, dangerously wounded in any of his limbs, readily parts with it to save the rest of his body.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Liberty is like rich food and strong wine: the strong natures accustomed to them thrive and grow even stronger on them; but they deplete, inebriate and destroy the weak.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
To renounce liberty is to renounce being a man, to surrender the rights of humanity and even its duties.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
To renounce freedom is to renounce one's humanity, one's rights as a man and equally one's duties.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
The first sentiment of man was that of his existence, his first care that of preserving it.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
If there is in this world a well-attested account, it is that of vampires. Nothing is lacking: official reports, affidavits of well-known people, of surgeons, of priests, of magistrates; the judicial proof is most complete. And with all that, who is there who believes in vampires?
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
They say that Caliph Omar, when consulted about what had to be done with the library of Alexandria, answered as follows: 'If the books of this library contain matters opposed to the Koran, they are bad and must be burned. If they contain only the doctrine of the Koran, burn them anyway, for they are superfluous.' Our learned men have cited this reasoning as the height of absurdity. However, suppose Gregory the Great was there instead of Omar and the Gospel instead of the Koran. The library would still have been burned, and that might well have been the finest moment in the life of this illustrious pontiff.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
But in some great souls, who consider themselves as citizens of the world, and forcing the imaginary barriers that separate people from people...
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
A feeble body makes a feeble mind. I do not know what doctors cure us of, but I know this: they infect us with very deadly diseases, cowardice, timidity, credulity, the fear of death. What matter if they make the dead walk, we have no need of corpses; they fail to give us men, and it is men we need.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Laws are always useful to those who possess and vexatious to those who have nothing.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Liberty may be gained, but can never be recovered." (Bk2:8)
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Our will is always for our own good, but we do not always see what that is; the people is never corrupted, but it is often deceived..." (Bk2:3)
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Government in its infancy had no regular and permanent form. For want of a sufficient fund of philosophy and experience, men could see no further than the present inconveniences, and never thought of providing remedies for future ones, but in proportion as they arose.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Happy am I, for every time I meditate on governments, I always find new reasons in my inquiries for loving my own country.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
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
What, then, is the government? An intermediary body established between the subjects and the sovereign for their mutual communication, a body charged with the execution of the laws and the maintenance of freedom, both civil and political.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau