Jean-Jacques Rousseau Quotes
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
I say to myself: "Who are you to measure infinite power?
-
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.
-
To renounce freedom is to renounce one's humanity, one's rights as a man and equally one's duties.
-
There is not a single ill-doer who could not be turned to some good.
-
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!
-
A person who can break wind is not dead.
-
Liberty is obedience to the law which one has laid down for oneself
-
L'accent est l'âme du discours.
-
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.
-
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.
-
When a man dies he clutches in his hands only that which he has given away during his lifetime.
-
The animals you eat are not those who devour others; you do not eat the carnivorous beasts, you take them as your pattern. You only hunger for the sweet and gentle creatures which harm no one, which follow you, serve you, and are devoured by you as the reward of their service.
-
Many men, seemingly impelled by fortune, hasten forward to meet misfortune half way.
-
There are times when I am so unlike myself that I might be taken for someone else of an entirely opposite character.
-
It is to law alone that men owe justice and liberty. It is this salutary organ, of the will of all which establishes in civil rights the natural equality between men. It is this celestial voice which dictates to each citizen the precepts of public reason, and teaches him to act according to the rules of his own judgment and not to behave inconsistently with himself. It is with this voice alone that political leaders should speak when. they command.
-
The world is woman's book. [Fr., Le monde est le livre des femmes.]
-
I prefer liberty with danger than peace with slavery.
-
I long remained a child, and I am still one in many respects.
-
One can buy anything with money except morality.
-
A citizen should render to the state all the services he can as soon as the sovereign demands them.
-
That which renders life burdensome to us generally arises from the abuse of it.