Jean-Jacques Rousseau Quotes
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There are times when I am so unlike myself that I might be taken for someone else of an entirely opposite character.
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What good would it be to possess the whole universe if one were its only survivor?
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L'offenseur ne pardonne jamais.1
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In the strict sense of the term, a true democracy has never existed, and never will exist.
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Interest is the spur of the people, but glory that of great souls.
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I prefer liberty with danger than peace with slavery.
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A citizen should render to the state all the services he can as soon as the sovereign demands them.
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The training of children is a profession, where we must know how to waste time in order to save it.
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We are born, so to speak, twice over; born into existence, and born into life; born a human being, and born a man.
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Never did I think so much, exist so much, be myself so much as in the journeys I have made alone and on foot. Walking has something about it which animates and enlivens my ideas. I can hardly think while I am still; my body must be in motion to move my mind.
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Every blue-stocking will remain a spinster as long as there are sensible men on the earth. [Fr., Toute fille lettree restera fille toute sa vie, quand il n'y aura que des hommes senses sur la terre.]
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He who eats in idleness that which he himself has not earned, steals it; and a capitalist whom the state pays for doing nothing differs little in my eyes from a brigand, who lives at the expense of passers-by.
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Foxley translation
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Inopportune consolations increase a deep sorrow.
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The truth brings no man a fortune.
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Every man has the right to risk his own life in order to preserve it. Has it ever been said that a man who throws himself out the window to escape from a fire is guilty of suicide?
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Ruthless man: you begin by slaying the animal and then you devour it, as if to slay it twice. It is not enough. You turn against the dead flesh, it revolts you, it must be transformed by fire, boiled and roasted, seasoned and disguised with drugs; you must have butchers, cooks, turnspits, men who will rid the murder of its horrors, who will dress the dead bodies so that the taste decieved by these disguises will not reject what is strange to it, and will feast on corpses, the very sight of which would sicken you.
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Ordinary readers, forgive my paradoxes: one must make them when one reflects; and whatever you may say, I prefer being a man with paradoxes than a man with prejudices.
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The money that we possess is the instrument of liberty, that which we lack and strive to obtain is the instrument of slavery.
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All through life a man has need of a counsellor and guide.
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Our greatest evils flow from ourselves.
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Insults are the arguments employed by those who are in the wrong.
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One can buy anything with money except morality.
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Women speak at an earlier age, more easily, and more agreeably than men; they are accused also of speaking more; this is as it should be, and I willingly change the reproach into a eulogy.