Jean-Jacques Rousseau Quotes
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Conscience is the voice of the soul, the passions are the voice of the body. Is it astonishing that often these two languages contradict each other, and then to which must we listen? Too often reason deceives us; we have only too much acquired the right of refusing to listen to it; but conscience never deceives us; it is the true guide of man; it is to man what instinct is to the body; which follows it, obeys nature, and never is afraid of going astray.
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I don't know what is truth,but I can tell you how to find it!
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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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Money is the seed of money, and the first guinea is sometimes more difficult to acquire than the second million.
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Anticipation and Hope are born twins.
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What wisdom can you find that is greater than kindness?
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It is not our criminal actions that require courage to confess, but those which are ridiculous and foolish.
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If I am part of a group of 100 people, do 99 people have the right to sentence me to death, just because they are majority?
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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.'
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I only see clearly what I remember.
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Every free action has two causes that come together to produce it. One is moral, the will that determines the act; the other is physical, the power that executes the will to act.
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Why should we build our happiness on the opinons of others, when we can find it in our own hearts?
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Our greatest evil flows from ourselves.
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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.
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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.
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Being wealthy isn't just a question of having lots of money. It's a question of what we want. Wealth isn't an absolute, it's relative to desire. Every time we seek something that we can't afford, we can be counted as poor, how much money we may actually have.
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The tone of good conversation is brilliant and natural; it is neither tedious nor frivolous; it is instructive without pedantry, gay without tumultuousness, polished without affectation, gallant without insipidity, waggish without equivocation.
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For, as I think I have said, I can only meditate when I am walking. When I stop I cease to think; my mind only works with my legs.
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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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Watch a cat when it enters a room for the first time. It searches and smells about, it is not quiet for a moment, it trusts nothing until it has examined and made acquaintance with everything.
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Do to others as you would have others do to you, inspires all men with that other maxim of natural goodness a great deal less perfect, but perhaps more useful: Do good to yourself with as little prejudice as you can to others.
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At Genoa, the word Liberty may be read over the front of the prisons and on the chains of the galley-slaves. This application of the device is good and just. It is indeed only malefactors of all estates who prevent the citizen from being free. In the country in which all such men were in the galleys, the most perfect liberty would be enjoyed.
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The English people think they are free; they are greatly deceived; they are free only during the election of members of Parliament.
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Do you not know...that a child badly taught is farther from being wise than one not taught at all?