Jean-Jacques Rousseau Quotes

209 Sourced Quotes

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.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Whoever refuses to obey the general will will be forced to do so by the entire body; this means merely that he will be forced to be free.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
I also realized that the philosophers, far from ridding me of my vain doubts, only multiplied the doubts that tormented me and failed to remove any one of them. So I chose another guide and said, Let me follow the Inner Light; it will not lead me so far astray as others have done, or if it does it will be my own fault, and I shall not go so far wrong if I follow my own illusions as if I trusted to their deceits.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
The money that we possess is the instrument of liberty, that which we lack and strive to obtain is the instrument of slavery.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
That man is truly free who desires what he is able to perform, and does what he desires.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Luxury either comes of riches or makes them necessary; it corrupts at once rich and poor, the rich by possession and the poor by covetousness.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
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.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
I can only meditate when I am walking. When I stop, I cease to think; my mind works only with my legs.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
The most absolute authority is that which penetrates into a man's innermost being and concerns itself no less with his will than with his actions.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Definitions might be good if we did not employ words in making them.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
It is manifestly contrary to the law of nature, however defined, that a handful of people should gorge themselves with superfluities while the hungry majority goes in need of necessities.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
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.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
General abstract truth is the most precious of all blessings; without it, man is blind; it is the eye of reason.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
But I am mistaken in speaking of a Christian republic; the terms are mutually exclusive. Christianity preaches only servitude and dependence. Its spirit is so favorable to tyranny that it always profits by such a regime. True Christians are made to be slaves, and they know it and do not much mind; this short life counts for too little in their eyes.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
War is then not a relationship between one man and another, but a relationship between one State and another, in which individuals are enemies only by accident, not as men, nor even as citizens, but as soldiers; not as members of the fatherland, but as its defenders. Finally, any State can only have other States, and not men, as enemies, inasmuch as it is impossible to fix a true relation between things of different natures.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
The taste for splendor is hardly ever combined in the same souls with the taste for the honorable.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Love childhood, indulge its sports, its pleasures, its delightful instincts. Who has not sometimes regretted that age when laughter was ever on the lips, and when the heart was ever at peace?

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
I loved too sincerely, too completely, I venture to say, to be able to be happy easily.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
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.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
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.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
The problem is to find a form of association which will defend and protect with the whole common force the person and goods of each associate, and in which each, while uniting himself with all, may still obey himself alone, and remain as free as before.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
For no more by the law of reason than by the law of nature can anything occur without a cause.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
But in some great souls, who consider themselves as citizens of the world, and forcing the imaginary barriers that separate people from people...

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Equality is deemed by many a mere speculative chimera, which can never be reduced to practice. But if the abuse is inevitable, does it follow that we ought not to try at least to mitigate it? It is precisely because the force of things tends always to destroy equality that the force of the legislature must always tend to maintain it.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
A citizen should render to the state all the services he can as soon as the sovereign demands them.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Supreme happiness consists in self-content; that we may gain this self-content, we are placed upon this earth and endowed with freedom.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
If, by chance, someone among those men of extraordinary talent is found who has firmness of soul and who refuses to yield to the genius of his age and to debase himself with childish works, woe unto him! He will die in poverty and oblivion.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Our will is always for our own good, but we do not always see what that is; the people is never corrupted, but it is often deceived, and on such occasions only does it seem to will what is bad.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Gluttony is the vice of feeble minds. The gourmand has his brains in his palate, he can do nothing but eat; he is so stupid and incapable that the table is the only place for him, and dishes are the only things he knows anything about. Let us leave him to this business without regret; it is better for him and for us.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
As soon as we have contrived to give our pupil an idea of the word "Useful," we have got an additional means of controlling him, for this word makes a great impression on him, provided that its meaning for him is a meaning relative to his own age, and provided he clearly sees its relation to his own well-being. This word makes no impression on your scholars because you have taken no pains to give it a meaning they can understand, and because other people always undertake to supply their needs so that they never require to think for themselves, and do not know what utility is. "What is the use of that?"

Jean-Jacques Rousseau