Jean-Jacques Rousseau Quotes
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Equality, because without it there can be no liberty.
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We cannot teach children the danger of telling lies to men without realising, on the man's part, the danger of telling lies to children. A single untruth on the part of the master will destroy the results of his education.
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How many famous and high-spirited heroes have lived a day too long?
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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.
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My liveliest delight was in having conquered myself.
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Everything made by man may be destroyed by man; there are no ineffaceable characters except those engraved by nature; and nature makes neither princes nor rich men nor great lords.
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Men speak from knowledge, women from imagination.
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The political body, therefore, is also a moral being which has a will; and this general will, which tends always to the conservation and well-being of the whole and of each part of it ... is, for all members of the state ... the rule of what is just or unjust.
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Anticipation and Hope are born twins.
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A man says what he knows, a woman says what will please.
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The strength of the people is effective only if it is concentrated; it evaporates and is lost when it is dispersed, just as gunpowder scattered on the ground ignites only grain by grain.
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Money is the seed of money, and the first guinea is sometimes more difficult to acquire than the second million.
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What wisdom can you find that is greater than kindness?
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I love idleness. I love to busy myself about trifles, to begin a hundred things and not finish one of them, to come and go as my fancy bids me, to change my plan every moment, to follow a fly in all its circlings, to try and uproot a rock to see what is underneath, eagerly to begin a ten-years' task to give it up after ten minutes: in short, to fritter away the whole day inconsequentially and incoherently, and to follow nothing but the whim of the moment.
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The truths of the Scriptures are so marked and inimitable, that the inventor would be more of a miraculous character than the hero.
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The majesty of the Scriptures strikes me with admiration, as the purity of the gospel has its influence on my heart.
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Plant and your spouse plants with you; weed and you weed alone.
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The bigger a state becomes the more liberty diminishes.
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Base souls have no faith in great individuals.
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Happiness: a good bank account, a good cook, and a good digestion.
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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.
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Definitions would be good things if we did not use words to make them.
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The happiest is he who suffers least; the most miserable is he who enjoys least.
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Truth is an homage that the good man pays to his own dignity.