We are born weak, we need strength; helpless, we need aid; foolish, we need reason. All that we lack at birth, all that we need when we come to man’s estate, is the gift of education.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
It is unnatural for a majority to rule, for a majority can seldom be organized and united for specific action, and a minority can.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
The body politic, as well as the human body, begins to die as soon as it is born, and carries itself the causes of its destruction.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Free people, remember this maxim: we may acquire liberty, but it is never recovered if it is once lost.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Childhood is the sleep of reason.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Plant and your spouse plants with you; weed and you weed alone.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Although modesty is natural to man, it is not natural to children. Modesty only begins with the knowledge of evil.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
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.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Top 10
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
QUOTES
People who know little are usually great talkers, while men who know much say little.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
You forget that the fruits belong to all and that the land belongs to no one.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
It is too difficult to think nobly when one thinks only of earning a living.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
When something an affliction happens to you, you either let it defeat you, or you defeat it.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Force does not constitute right… obedience is due only to legitimate powers.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Every man has a right to risk his own life for the preservation of it.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
A feeble body weakens the mind.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
I have always said and felt that true enjoyment can not be described.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Heroes are not known by the loftiness of their carriage; the greatest braggarts are generally the merest cowards.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
How many famous and high-spirited heroes have lived a day too long?
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
To endure is the first thing that a child ought to learn, and that which he will have the most need to know.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
The person who has lived the most is not the one with the most years but the one with the richest experiences.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
The training of children is a profession, where we must know how to waste time in order to save it.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Our will is always for our own good, but we do not always see what that is.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
We do not know what is really good or bad fortune.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Base souls have no faith in great individuals.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Fame is but the breath of people, and that often unwholesome.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
The English think they are free. They are free only during the election of members of parliament.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Gratitude is a duty which ought to be paid, but which none have a right to expect.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Our affections as well as our bodies are in perpetual flux.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
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.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
All of my misfortunes come from having thought too well of my fellows.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Money is the seed of money, and the first guinea is sometimes more difficult to acquire than the second million.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
We should not teach children the sciences; but give them a taste for them.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
The English are predisposed to pride, the French to vanity.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Most nations, as well as people are impossible only in their youth; they become incorrigible as they grow older.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Falsehood has an infinity of combinations, but truth has only one mode of being.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Nature never deceives us; it is we who deceive ourselves.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Those that are most slow in making a promise are the most faithful in the performance of it.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Remorse sleeps during prosperity but awakes bitter consciousness during adversity.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Take the course opposite to custom and you will almost always do well.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
The first step towards vice is to shroud innocent actions in mystery, and whoever likes to conceal something sooner or later has reason to conceal it.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Absolute silence leads to sadness. It is the image of death.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Our greatest evils flow from ourselves.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
We pity in others only the those evils which we ourselves have experienced.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Take from the philosopher the pleasure of being heard and his desire for knowledge ceases.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
I hate books; they only teach us to talk about things we know nothing about.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
However great a man’s natural talent may be, the act of writing cannot be learned all at once.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
No true believer could be intolerant or a persecutor. If I were a magistrate and the law carried the death penalty against atheists, I would begin by sending to the stake whoever denounced another.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
I may be no better, but at least I am different.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
It is a mania shared by philosophers of all ages to deny what exists and to explain what does not exist.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
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.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
I only see clearly what I remember.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
I long remained a child, and I am still one in many respects.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
O love, if I regret the age when one savors you, it is not for the hour of pleasure, but for the one that follows it.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
We are born, so to speak, twice over; born into existence, and born into life; born a human being, and born a man.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Religious persecutors are not believers, they are rascals.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
No man has any natural authority over his fellow men.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
I have resolved on an enterprise that has no precedent and will have no imitator. I want to set before my fellow human beings a man in every way true to nature; and that man will be myself.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
I undertake the same project as Montaigne, but with an aim contrary to his own: for he wrote his Essays only for others, and I write my reveries only for myself.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
God made me and broke the mold.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Happiness: a good bank account, a good cook, and a good digestion.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
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?
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Insults are the arguments employed by those who are in the wrong.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Virtue is a state of war, and to live in it we have always to combat with ourselves.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
What wisdom can you find that is greater than kindness?
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Whoever blushes is already guilty; true innocence is ashamed of nothing.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
