Jean-Jacques Rousseau Quotes
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Slaves lose everything in their chains, even the desire of escaping from them.
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A country cannot subsist well without liberty, nor liberty without virtue.
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The people is never corrupted, but it is often deceived.
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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.
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Provided a man is not mad, he can be cured of every folly but vanity.
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We have to have powder for our wigs; that is why so many poor people have no bread.
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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.
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The more humanity owes him, the more society denies him. Every door is shut against him, even when he has a right to its being opened: and if he ever obtains justice, it is with much greater difficulty than others obtain favors.
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The taste for splendor is hardly ever combined in the same souls with the taste for the honorable.
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Smell is the sense of memory and desire.
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Nothing is less in our power than the heart, and far from commanding we are forced to obey it.
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In all the ills that befall us, we are more concerned by the intention than the result. A tile that falls off a roof may injure us more seriously, but it will not wound us so deeply as a stone thrown deliberately by a malevolent hand. The blow may miss, but the intention always strikes home.
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It is hard to prevent oneself from believing what one so keenly desires, and who can doubt that the interest we have in admitting or denying the reality of the Judgement to come determines the faith of most men in accordance with their hopes and fears.
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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.
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The want of occupation is no less the plague of society than of solitude.
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It is in man's heart that the life of nature's spectacle exists; to see it, one must feel it.
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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.
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I have entered on an enterprise which is without precedent, and will have no imitator. I propose to show my fellows a man as nature made him, and this man shall be myself.
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Let's go dance under the elms:Step lively, young lassies.Let's go dance under the elms:Gallants, take up your pipes.
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Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody.
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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.
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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.
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Take from the philosopher the pleasure of being heard and his desire for knowledge ceases.
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In the strict sense of the term, a true democracy has never existed, and never will exist.