Jean-Jacques Rousseau Quotes
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I don't know what is truth,but I can tell you how to find it!
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The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless.
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A man says what he knows, a woman says what will please.
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At sixteen, the adolescent knows about suffering because he himself has suffered, but he barely knows that other beings also suffer.
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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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Do you not know...that a child badly taught is farther from being wise than one not taught at all?
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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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What wisdom can you find that is greater than kindness?
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Fame is but the breath of people, and that often unwholesome.
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Since men cannot create new forces, but merely combine and control those which already exist, the only way in which they can preserve themselves is by uniting their separate powers in a combination strong enough to overcome any resistance, uniting them so that their powers are directed by a single motive and act in concert.
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Leave those vain moralists, my friend, and return to the depth of your soul: that is where you will always rediscover the source of the sacred fire which so often inflamed us with love of the sublime virtues; that is where you will see the eternal image of true beauty, the contemplation of which inspires us with a holy enthusiasm.
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Teach by doing whenever you can, and only fall back upon words when doing it is out of the question.
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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.
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Too much apparatus, designed to guide us in experiments and to supplement the exactness of our senses, makes us neglect to use those senses...The more ingenious our apparatus, the coarser and more unskillful are our senses. We surround ourselves with tools and fail to use those which nature has provided every one of us.
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To abstain that we may enjoy is the epicurianism of reason.
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Religious persecutors are not believers, they are rascals.
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I only see clearly what I remember.
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Force does not constitute right... obedience is due only to legitimate powers.
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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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To endure is the first thing that a child ought to learn, and that which he will have the most need to know.
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To study men, we must look close by; to study man, we must learn to look afar; if we are to discover essential characteristics, we must first observe differences.
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I have never thought, for my part, that man's freedom consists in his being able to do whatever he wills, but that he should not, by any human power, be forced to do what is against his will.
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Christ preaches only servitude and dependence... True Christians are made to be slaves.
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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.