Jean-Jacques Rousseau Quotes
-
If there were a nation of Gods, it would govern itself democratically. A government so perfect is not suited to men.
-
The people is never corrupted, but it is often deceived.
-
The problem is to find a form of association which will defend and protect with the whole common force the person and goods of each associate, and in which each, while uniting himself with all, may still obey himself alone, and remain as free as before.
-
A country cannot subsist well without liberty, nor liberty without virtue.
-
Provided a man is not mad, he can be cured of every folly but vanity.
-
Ah, that is a perfume in which I delight; when they roast coffee near my house, I hasten to open the door to take in all the aroma.
-
Let's go dance under the elms:Step lively, young lassies.Let's go dance under the elms:Gallants, take up your pipes.
-
No true believer could be intolerant or a persecutor. If I were a magistrate and the law carried the death penalty against atheists, I would begin by sending to the stake whoever denounced another.
-
The taste for splendor is hardly ever combined in the same souls with the taste for the honorable.
-
It is in man's heart that the life of nature's spectacle exists; to see it, one must feel it.
-
Peter had a genius for imitation; but he lacked true genius, which is creative and makes all from nothing.
-
Great men never make bad use of their superiority. They see it and feel it and are not less modest. The more they have, the more they know their own deficiencies.
-
Reading, solitude, idleness, a soft and sedentary life, intercourse with women and young people, these are perilous paths for a young man, and these lead him constantly into danger.
-
I also realized that the philosophers, far from ridding me of my vain doubts, only multiplied the doubts that tormented me and failed to remove any one of them. So I chose another guide and said, Let me follow the Inner Light; it will not lead me so far astray as others have done, or if it does it will be my own fault, and I shall not go so far wrong if I follow my own illusions as if I trusted to their deceits.
-
The training of children is a profession, where we must know how to waste time in order to save it.
-
I was not much afraid of punishment, I was only afraid of disgrace.But that I feared more than death, more than crime, more than anything in the world. I should have rejoiced if the earth had swallowed me up and stifled me in the abyss. But my invincible sense of shame prevailed over everything . It was my shame that made me impudent, and the more wickedly I behaved the bolder my fear of confession made me. I saw nothing but the horror of being found out, of being publicly proclaimed, to my face, as a thief, as a liar, and slanderer.
-
Liberty is not to be found in any form of government; she is in the heart of the free man; he bears her with him everywhere.
-
That which renders life burdensome to us generally arises from the abuse of it.
-
Nothing is less in our power than the heart, and far from commanding we are forced to obey it.
-
I prefer liberty with danger than peace with slavery.
-
Beings who are so uniquely constituted must necessarily express themselves in other ways than ordinary men. It is impossible that with souls so differently modified, they should not carry over into the expression of their feelings and ideas the stamp of those modifications.
-
In the strict sense of the term, a true democracy has never existed, and never will exist.
-
L'accent est l'âme du discours.
-
Liberty is obedience to the law which one has laid down for oneself