Jean-Jacques Rousseau Quotes
-
Money is the seed of money, and the first guinea is sometimes more difficult to acquire than the second million.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
Force does not constitute right... obedience is due only to legitimate powers.
-
The strongest is never strong enough to be always the master, unless he transforms strength into right, and obedience into duty.
-
The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless.
-
Do you not know...that a child badly taught is farther from being wise than one not taught at all?
-
To endure is the first thing that a child ought to learn, and that which he will have the most need to know.
-
A man says what he knows, a woman says what will please.
-
I have never believed that man's freedom consisted in doing what he wants, but rather in never doing what he does not want to do.
-
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.
-
Fame is but the breath of people, and that often unwholesome.
-
What wisdom can you find that is greater than kindness?
-
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.
-
Teach by doing whenever you can, and only fall back upon words when doing it is out of the question.
-
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.
-
To abstain that we may enjoy is the epicurianism of reason.
-
It is believed that physiognomy is only a simple development of the features already marked out by nature. It is my opinion, however, that in addition to this development, the features come insensibly to be formed and assume their shape from the frequent and habitual expression of certain affections of the soul. These affections are marked on the countenance; nothing is more certain than this; and when they turn into habits, they must leave on it durable impressions.
-
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.
-
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.
-
Even knaves may be made good for something.
-
The bigger a state becomes the more liberty diminishes.
-
Religious persecutors are not believers, they are rascals.