Jean-Jacques Rousseau Quotes
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By doing good we become good.
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Whoever blushes is already guilty; true innocence is ashamed of nothing.
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No man has any natural authority over his fellow men.
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Conscience is the voice of the soul, the passions are the voice of the body. It is strange that these voices often contradict each other?
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The mind grows narrow in proportion as the soul grows corrupt.
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The political body, therefore, is also a moral being which has a will; and this general will, which tends always to the conservation and well-being of the whole and of each part of it ... is, for all members of the state ... the rule of what is just or unjust.
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The strength of the people is effective only if it is concentrated; it evaporates and is lost when it is dispersed, just as gunpowder scattered on the ground ignites only grain by grain.
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Childhood is the sleep of reason. [Fr., L'enfance est le sommeil de la raison.]
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Generally we obtain very surely and very speedily what we are not too anxious to obtain.
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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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This dog, which, although no beauty, was of an uncommon breed, I had made my friend and companion; and it certainly deserved the name better than the majority of those who had assumed it.
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Or, rather, let us be more simple and less vain.
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It is well known that a loose and easy dress contributes much to give to both sexes those fine proportions of body that are observable in the Grecian statues, and which serve as models to our present artists.
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I will say little of the importance of a good education; nor will I stop to prove that the current one is bad. Countless others have done so before me, and I do not like to fill a book with things everybody knows. I will note that for the longest time there has been nothing but a cry against the established practice without anyone taking it upon himself to propose a better one. The literature and the learning of our age tend much more to destruction than to edification.
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Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains. Those who think themselves the masters of others are indeed greater slaves than they.
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The empire of woman is an empire of softness, of address, of complacency. Her commands are caresses, her menaces are tears.
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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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Behold the works of our philosophers; with all their pompous diction, how mean and contemptible they are by comparison with the Scriptures! Is it possible that a book at once so simple and sublime should be merely the work of man?
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I have entered on an enterprise which is without precedent, and will have no imitator. I propose to show my fellows a man as nature made him, and this man shall be myself.
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Absolute silence leads to sadness. It is the image of death.
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Heroes are not known by the loftiness of their carriage; the greatest braggarts are generally the merest cowards.
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My liveliest delight was in having conquered myself.
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The social compact sets up among the citizens as equality of such kind, that they all bind themselves to observe the same conditions and should therefore all enjoy the same rights.
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How many famous and high-spirited heroes have lived a day too long?