Jean-Jacques Rousseau Quotes

How much more reasonable is it to say with the sage Plato, that the perfect happiness of a state con...

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

The bounds of human possibility are not as confining as we think they are; they are made to seem to ...

Liberty may be gained, but can never be recovered." (Bk2:8)

Every man having been born free and master of himself, no one else may under any pretext whatever su...

As soon as any man says of the affairs of the State "What does it matter to me?" the State may be gi...

In any case, frequent punishments are a sign of weakness or slackness in the government. There is no...

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

The decent man and the lover holds back even when he could obtain what he wishes. To win this silent...

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

He who is the most slow in making a promise is the most faithful in the performance of it.

Being wealthy isn't just a question of having lots of money. It's a question of what we want. Wealth...

O love, if I regret the age when one savors you, it is not for the hour of pleasure, but for the one...

The happiest is he who suffers the least pain the most miserable he who enjoys the least pleasure.

I hate books they teach us only to talk about what we do not know.

All that time is lost which might be better employed.

The truth brings no man a fortune.

Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.

She was dull, unattractive, couldn't tell the time, count money or tie her own shoe laces... But I l...

Base souls have no faith in great individuals.

I am not worried about pleasing clever minds or fashionable people. In every period there will be me...

What wisdom can you find that is greater than kindness?

An unbroken horse erects his mane, paws the ground and starts back impetuously at the sight of the b...

Money is the seed of money, and the first guinea is sometimes more difficult to acquire than the sec...

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

We are born weak, we need strength; helpless, we need aid; foolish, we need reason. All that we lack...

I say to myself: "Who are you to measure infinite power?

How many famous and high-spirited heroes have lived a day too long?

Falsehood has an infinity of combinations, but truth has only one mode of being.

Whoever blushes is already guilty true innocence is ashamed of nothing.

No man has any natural authority over his fellow men.

People who know little are usually great talkers, while men who know much say little.

Although modesty is natural to man, it is not natural to children. Modesty only begins with the know...

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

Every person has a right to risk their own life for the preservation of it.

Our will is always for our own good, but we do not always see what that is.

When I stay in one Place, I can hardly think at all; my body had to be on the move to set my mind go...

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

Happiness: a good bank account a good cook and a good digestion.

A taste for ostentation is rarely associated in the same souls with a taste for honesty

If the life and death of Socrates were those of a sage the life and death of Jesus were those of a ...

[T]he man who meditates is a depraved animal.

Happiness: a good bank account, a good cook, and a good digestion.

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

I may not amount to much but at least I am unique.

Liberty is like rich food and strong wine: the strong natures accustomed to them thrive and grow eve...

Or, rather, let us be more simple and less vain.

We cannot teach children the danger of lying to men without feeling as men, the greater danger of ly...

Little privations are easily endured when the heart is better treated than the body.

Reading, solitude, idleness, a soft and sedentary life, intercourse with women and young people, the...

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

Every man has the right to risk his own life in order to preserve it. Has it ever been said that a m...

Everything is good as it comes from the hands of the Maker of the world, but degenerates once it get...

I am not made like any of those I have seen. I venture to believe that I am not made like any of tho...

Man was born free and everywhere he is in shackles.

A feeble body makes a feeble mind. I do not know what doctors cure us of, but I know this: they infe...

Nature never deceives us it is we who deceive ourselves.

However great a man's natural talent may be, the act of writing cannot be learned all at once.

Plant and your spouse plants with you weed and you weed alone.

Free people, remember this maxim: we may acquire liberty, but it is never recovered if it is once lo...

I prefer liberty with danger than peace with slavery.

A feeble body weakens the mind.

No true believer could be intolerant or a persecutor. If I were a magistrate and the law carried the...

I hate books they only teach us to talk about things we know nothing about.

Ancient politicians talked incessantly about morality and virtue; our politicians talk only about bu...

Take from the philosopher the pleasure of being heard and his desire for knowledge ceases.

To write a good love letter you ought to begin without knowing what you mean to say and to finish w...

Gratitude is a duty which ought to be paid but which none have a right to expect.

Liberty is like those solid and tasty foods or those full-bodied wines which are appropriate for nou...

Absolute silence leads to sadness. It is the image of death.

The first man, who, after enclosing a piece of ground, took it into his head to say, "This is mine,"...

Teach your scholar to observe the phenomena of nature; you will soon rouse his curiosity, but if you...

The world of reality has its limits the world of imagination is boundless.

If there is in this world a well-attested account, it is that of vampires. Nothing is lacking: offic...

Children are taught to look down on their nurses (nannies), to treat them as mere servants. When the...

The sword wears out its sheath, as it is sometimes said. That is my story. My passions have made me ...

Hatred, as well as love, renders its votaries credulous.

I believed that I was approaching the end of my days without having tasted to the full any of the pl...

There are times when I am so unlike myself that I might be taken for someone else of an entirely opp...

So finally we tumble into the abyss, we ask God why he has made us so feeble. But, in spite of ourse...

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

I was not much afraid of punishment, I was only afraid of disgrace.But that I feared more than death...

You will never be free as long as there remains one Russian soldier in Poland and your freedom will ...

I know that [civilized men] do nothing but boast incessantly of the peace and repose they enjoy in t...

Even the soberest judged it requisite to sacrifice one part of their liberty to ensure the other, as...

Political writers argue in regard to the love of liberty with the same philosophy that philosophers ...

But in some great souls, who consider themselves as citizens of the world, and forcing the imaginary...

...an animal, at the end of a few months, is what it will be all its life; and its species, at the e...

Such is the pure movement of nature prior to all reflection. Such is the force of natural pity, whic...

From this moment there would be no question of virtue or morality; for despotism cui ex honesto null...

Now it is easy to perceive that the moral part of love is a factitious sentiment, engendered by soci...

The extreme inequality of our ways of life, the excess of idleness among some and the excess of toil...

The first sentiment of man was that of his existence, his first care that of preserving it.

The first man, who, after enclosing a piece of ground, took it into his head to say, "This is mine,"...

The first man who, having fenced in a piece of land, said "This is mine," and found people naïve eno...

Government in its infancy had no regular and permanent form. For want of a sufficient fund of philos...

We seek knowledge only because we desire enjoyment, and it is impossible to conceive why a person wh...

Women, for their part, are always complaining that we raise them only to be vain and coquettish, tha...

O Fabricius! What would your great soul have thought, if to your own misfortune you had been called ...

Are your principles not engraved in all hearts, and in order to learn your laws is it not enough to ...

Princes always are always happy to see developing among their subjects the taste for agreeable arts ...