Jean-Jacques Rousseau Quotes
-
Whoever refuses to obey the general will will be forced to do so by the entire body; this means merely that he will be forced to be free.
-
The empire of woman is an empire of softness, of address, of complacency. Her commands are caresses, her menaces are tears.
-
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.
-
As evening approached, I came down from the heights of the island, and I liked then to go and sit on the shingle in some secluded spot by the lake; there the noise of the waves and the movement of the water, taking hold of my senses and driving all other agitation from my soul, would plunge me into delicious reverie in which night often stole upon me unawares.
-
Finance is a slave's word.
-
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.
-
We do not know either unalloyed happiness or unmitigated misfortune. Everything in this world is a tangled yarn; we taste nothing in its purity; we do not remain two moments in the same state. Our affections as well as bodies, are in a perpetual flux.
-
The French painter Rousseau was once asked why he put a naked woman on a red sofa in the middle of his jungle pictures. He answered, 'I needed a bit of red there.'
-
Childhood is the sleep of reason. [Fr., L'enfance est le sommeil de la raison.]
-
If all were perfect Christians, individuals would do their duty; the people would be obedient to the laws, the magistrates incorrupt, and there would be neither vanity nor luxury in such a state.
-
Or, rather, let us be more simple and less vain.
-
The truths of the Scriptures are so marked and inimitable, that the inventor would be more of a miraculous character than the hero.
-
Once you teach people to say what they do not understand, it is easy enough to get them to say anything you like. v One could wish no easier death than that of Socrates, calmly discussing philosophy with his friends; one could fear nothing worse than that of Jesus, dying in torment, among the insults, the mockery, the curses of the whole nation. In the midst of these terrible sufferings, Jesus prays for his cruel murderers. Yes, if the life and death of Socrates are those of a philosopher, the life and death of Christ are those of a God.
-
Let the trumpet of the day of judgment sound when it will, I shall appear with this book in my hand before the Sovereign Judge, and cry with a loud voice, This is my work, there were my thoughts, and thus was I. I have freely told both the good and the bad, have hid nothing wicked, added nothing good.
-
It is not our criminal actions that require courage to confess, but those which are ridiculous and foolish.
-
The passions are the voice of the body.
-
I loved too sincerely, too completely, I venture to say, to be able to be happy easily.
-
This dog, which, although no beauty, was of an uncommon breed, I had made my friend and companion; and it certainly deserved the name better than the majority of those who had assumed it.
-
Although modesty is natural to man, it is not natural to children. Modesty only begins with the knowledge of evil.
-
One thinks himself the master of others, and still remains a greater slave than they.
-
Your first duty is to be humane. Love childhood. Look with friendly eyes on its games, its pleasures, its amiable dispositions. Which of you does not sometimes look back regretfully on the age when laughter was ever on the lips and the heart free of care? Why steal from the little innocents the enjoyment of a time that passes all too quickly?
-
Government originated in the attempt to find a form of association that defends and protects the person and property of each with the common force of all.
-
The mechanism she employs is much more powerful than ours, for all her levers move the human heart.
-
The general will is always right.