Jean-Jacques Rousseau Quotes
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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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People who know little are usually great talkers, while men who know much say little.
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There is no folly of which a man who is not a fool cannot get rid except vanity; of this nothing cures a man except experience of its bad consequences, if indeed anything can cure it.
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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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Our greatest evils flow from ourselves.
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Inopportune consolations increase a deep sorrow.
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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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Taste is, so to speak, the microscope of the judgment.
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Frequent punishments are always a sign of weakness or laziness on the part of a government.
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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 truth brings no man a fortune.
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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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We should not teach children the sciences; but give them a taste for them.
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Oh providence! Oh nature! Treasure of the poor, resource of the unfortunate. The person who feels, knows your holy laws and trusts them, the person whose heart is at peace and whose body does not suffer, thanks to you is not entirely prey to adversity.
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L'offenseur ne pardonne jamais.1
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Interest is the spur of the people, but glory that of great souls.
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Education is either from nature, from man or from things. The developing of our faculties and organs is the education of nature; that of man is the application we learn to make of this very developing; and that of things is the experience we acquire in regard to the different objects by which we are affected. All that we have not at our birth, and that we stand in need of at the years of maturity, is the gift of education.
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What good would it be to possess the whole universe if one were its only survivor?
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All through life a man has need of a counsellor and guide.
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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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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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One can buy anything with money except morality.
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The first person who, having enclosed a plot of land, took it into his head to say this is mine and found people simple enough to believe him was the true founder of civil society. What crimes, wars, murders, what miseries and horrors would the human race have been spared, had some one pulled up the stakes or filled in the ditch and cried out to his fellow men: "Do not listen to this imposter. You are lost if you forget that the fruits of the earth belong to all and the earth to no one!