Jean-Jacques Rousseau Quotes
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I may be no better, but at least I am different.
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I am not made like any of those I have seen. I venture to believe that I am not made like any of those who are in existence. If I am not better, at least I am different.
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Men, in general, are not this or that, they are what they are made to be.
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Whoever blushes is already guilty; true innocence is ashamed of nothing.
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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 science of government is only a science of combinations, of applications, and of exceptions, according to times, places and circumstances.
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Teach him to live rather than to avoid death: life is not breath, but action, the use of our senses, our mind, our faculties, every part of ourselves which makes us conscious of our being. Life consists less in length of days than in the keen sense of living. A man maybe buried at a hundred and may never have lived at all. He would have fared better had he died young.
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An intelligent being, is the active principle of all things. One must have renounced all common sense to doubt it, and it is a waste of time to try to prove such self evident truth.
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In truth, laws are always useful to those with possessions and harmful to those who have nothing; from which it follows that the social state is advantageous to men only when all possess something and none has too much.
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A child who passes through many hands in turn, can never be well brought up. At every change he makes a secret comparison, which continually tends to lessen his respect for those who control him, and with it their authority over him. If once he thinks there are grown-up people with no more sense than children the authority of age is destroyed and his education is ruined.
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Girls must be thwarted early in life.
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In the North the first words are, Help me; in the South, Love me.
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Rather suffer an injustice than commit one.
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But remain the teacher of the young teachers. Advise and direct us, and we will be ready to learn. I will have need of you as long as I live.
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The mind grows narrow in proportion as the soul grows corrupt.
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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 have always said and felt that true enjoyment can not be described.
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Love, known to the person by whom it is inspired, becomes more bearable.
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Why should we build our happiness on the opinons of others, when we can find it in our own hearts?
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The man who gets the most out of life is not the one who has lived it longest, but the one who has felt life most deeply.
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All kinds of frankness and honesty are terrible crimes in the eyes of society.
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The writings of women are always cold and pretty like themselves. There is as much wit as you may desire, but never any soul.
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Equality, because without it there can be no liberty.
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How many famous and high-spirited heroes have lived a day too long?