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Quotes by Jean Jacques Rousseau

A feeble body weakens the mind.
– Jean Jacques Rousseau
Absolute silence leads to sadness. It is the image of death.
– Jean Jacques Rousseau
All of my misfortunes come from having thought too well of my fellows.
– Jean Jacques Rousseau
Although modesty is natural to man, it is not natural to children. Modesty only begins with the knowledge of evil.
– Jean Jacques Rousseau
Base souls have no faith in great individuals.
– Jean Jacques Rousseau
Childhood is the sleep of reason.
– Jean Jacques Rousseau
Every man has a right to risk his own life for the preservation of it.
– Jean Jacques Rousseau
Falsehood has an infinity of combinations, but truth has only one mode of being.
– Jean Jacques Rousseau
Fame is but the breath of people, and that often unwholesome.
– Jean Jacques Rousseau
Force does not constitute right... obedience is due only to legitimate powers.
– Jean Jacques Rousseau
Free people, remember this maxim: we may acquire liberty, but it is never recovered if it is once lost.
– Jean Jacques Rousseau
Gratitude is a duty which ought to be paid, but which none have a right to expect.
– Jean Jacques Rousseau
Heroes are not known by the loftiness of their carriage; the greatest braggarts are generally the merest cowards.
– Jean Jacques Rousseau
How many famous and high-spirited heroes have lived a day too long?
– Jean Jacques Rousseau
However great a man's natural talent may be, the act of writing cannot be learned all at once.
– Jean Jacques Rousseau
I hate books; they only teach us to talk about things we know nothing about.
– Jean Jacques Rousseau
I have always said and felt that true enjoyment can not be described.
– Jean Jacques Rousseau
It is too difficult to think nobly when one thinks only of earning a living.
– Jean Jacques Rousseau
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
Man is born free, and everywhere he is in shackles.
– Jean Jacques Rousseau
Money is the seed of money, and the first guinea is sometimes more difficult to acquire than the second million.
– Jean Jacques Rousseau
Most nations, as well as people are impossible only in their youth; they become incorrigible as they grow older.
– Jean Jacques Rousseau
Nature never deceives us; it is we who deceive ourselves.
– Jean Jacques Rousseau
Our affections as well as our bodies are in perpetual flux.
– Jean Jacques Rousseau
Our greatest evils flow from ourselves.
– Jean Jacques Rousseau
Our will is always for our own good, but we do not always see what that is.
– Jean Jacques Rousseau
Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.
– Jean Jacques Rousseau
People who know little are usually great talkers, while men who know much say little.
– Jean Jacques Rousseau
Plant and your spouse plants with you; weed and you weed alone.
– Jean Jacques Rousseau
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.
– Jean Jacques Rousseau
Remorse sleeps during prosperity but awakes bitter consciousness during adversity.
– Jean Jacques Rousseau
Take from the philosopher the pleasure of being heard and his desire for knowledge ceases.
– Jean Jacques Rousseau
Take the course opposite to custom and you will almost always do well.
– Jean Jacques Rousseau
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
The English are predisposed to pride, the French to vanity.
– Jean Jacques Rousseau
The English think they are free. They are free only during the election of members of parliament.
– Jean Jacques Rousseau
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.
– Jean Jacques Rousseau
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
The training of children is a profession, where we must know how to waste time in order to save it
– Jean Jacques Rousseau
The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless.
– Jean Jacques Rousseau
There are two things to be considered with regard to any scheme. In the first place, Is it good in itself? In the second, Can it be easily put into practice?
– Jean Jacques Rousseau
Those that are most slow in making a promise are the most faithful in the performance of it.
– Jean Jacques Rousseau
To endure is the first thing that a child ought to learn, and that which he will have the most need to know.
– Jean Jacques Rousseau
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.
– Jean Jacques Rousseau
We do not know what is really good or bad fortune.
– Jean Jacques Rousseau
We pity in others only the those evils which we ourselves have experienced.
– Jean Jacques Rousseau
We should not teach children the sciences; but give them a taste for them.
– Jean Jacques Rousseau
When something an affliction happens to you, you either let it defeat you, or you defeat it.
– Jean Jacques Rousseau
You forget that the fruits belong to all and that the land belongs to no one.
– Jean Jacques Rousseau
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
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
Happiness: a good bank account, a good cook and a good digestion.
– Jean Jacques Rousseau
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
Your first appearance, he said to me, is the gauge by which you will be measured; try to manage that you may go beyond yourself in after times, but beware of ever doing less.
– Jean Jacques Rousseau
The happiest is the person who suffers the least pain; the most miserable who enjoys the least pleasure.
– Jean Jacques Rousseau
The strongest is never strong enough to be always the master, unless he transforms strength into right, and obedience into duty.
– Jean Jacques Rousseau
What wisdom can you find that is greater than kindness?
– Jean Jacques Rousseau
Virtue is a state of war, and to live in it we have always to combat with ourselves.
– Jean Jacques Rousseau
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.
– Jean Jacques Rousseau
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.
– Jean Jacques Rousseau
No man has any natural authority over his fellow men.
– Jean Jacques Rousseau
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.
– Jean Jacques Rousseau
God made me and broke the mold.
– Jean Jacques Rousseau
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.
– Jean Jacques Rousseau