Jean-Jacques Rousseau Quotes
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What good would it be to possess the whole universe if one were its only survivor?
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Interest is the spur of the people, but glory that of great souls.
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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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Our greatest evils flow from ourselves.
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The indifference of children towards meat is one proof that the taste for meat is unnatural; their preference is for vegetable foods...Beware of changing this natural taste and making children flesh-eaters, if not for their health's sake, for the sake of their character; for how can one explain away the fact that great meat-eaters are usually fiercer and more cruel than other men; this has been recognised at all times and in all places.
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If all were perfect Christians, individuals would do their duty; the people would be obedient to the laws, the magistrates incorrupt, and there would be neither vanity nor luxury in such a state.
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No man has any natural authority over his fellow men.
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Foxley translation
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We should not teach children the sciences; but give them a taste for them.
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To try to conceal our own heart is a bad means to read that of others.
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Remorse sleeps in the atmosphere of prosperity.
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Generally we obtain very surely and very speedily what we are not too anxious to obtain.
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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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The man is best served who has no occasion to put the hands of others at the end of his own arms.
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The opportunity of making happy is more scarce than we imagine; the punishment of missing it is, never to meet with it again; and the use we make of it leaves us an eternal sentiment of satisfaction or repentance.
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All through life a man has need of a counsellor and guide.
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An honest man nearly always thinks justly.
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Taste is, so to speak, the microscope of the judgment.
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I had been brought up in a church which decides everything and permits no doubts, so that having rejected one article of faith I was forced to reject the rest.
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Every man has a right to risk his own life for the preservation of it.
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L'offenseur ne pardonne jamais.1
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We are reduced to asking others what we are. We never dare to ask ourselves.
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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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I have never believed that man's freedom consisted in doing what he wants, but rather in never doing what he does not want to do.