Jean-Jacques Rousseau Quotes
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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!
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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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A citizen should render to the state all the services he can as soon as the sovereign demands them.
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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.
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I long remained a child, and I am still one in many respects.
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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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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.
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Every artists wants to be applauded
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Liberty is obedience to the law which one has laid down for oneself
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One can buy anything with money except morality.
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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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A man speaks of what he knows, a woman of what pleases her: the one requires knowledge, the other taste.
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God is intelligent; but in what manner? Man is intelligent by the act of reasoning, but the supreme intelligence lies under no necessity to reason. He requires neither premise nor consequences; nor even the simple form of a proposition. His knowledge is purely intuitive. He beholds equally what is and what will be. All truths are to Him as one idea, as all places are but one point, and all times one moment.
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We do not know what really good or bad fortune is.
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It is unnatural for a majority to rule, for a majority can seldom be organized and united for specific action, and a minority can.
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Inopportune consolations increase a deep sorrow.
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If I am part of a group of 100 people, do 99 people have the right to sentence me to death, just because they are majority?
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I prefer liberty with danger than peace with slavery.
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Patience patience quotes is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.
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Frequent punishments are always a sign of weakness or laziness on the part of a government.
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Do I dare set forth here the most important, the most useful rule of all education? It is not to save time, but to squander it.
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The truth brings no man a fortune.
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Interest is the spur of the people, but glory that of great souls.
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Our greatest evils flow from ourselves.