Jean-Jacques Rousseau Quotes

209 Sourced Quotes

Do to others as you would have others do to you, inspires all men with that other maxim of natural goodness a great deal less perfect, but perhaps more useful: Do good to yourself with as little prejudice as you can to others.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Hatred, as well as love, renders its votaries credulous.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
If happiness could be prolonged from love into marriage, we should have paradise on earth.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Nature never deceives us; it is always we who deceive ourselves.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Shall we say that the gospel story is the work of the imagination? My friend, such things are not imagined; and the doings of Socrates, which no one doubts, are less well attested than those of Jesus Christ.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
At length I recollected the thoughtless saying of a great princess, who, on being informed that the country people had no bread, replied, "Let them eat cake."

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Beings who are so uniquely constituted must necessarily express themselves in other ways than ordinary men. It is impossible that with souls so differently modified, they should not carry over into the expression of their feelings and ideas the stamp of those modifications.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Let us not forget what befits our present state in the pursuit of vain fancies. Mankind has its place in the sequence of things; childhood has its place in the sequence of human life; the man must be treated as a man and the child as a child. Give each his place, and keep him there. Control human passions according to man's nature; that is all we can do for his welfare. The rest depends on external forces, which are beyond our control.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Where is the man who owes nothing to the land in which he lives? Whatever that land may be, he owes to it the most precious thing possessed by man, the morality of his actions and the love of virtue.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
There are two things to be considered with regard to any scheme. In the first place, Is it good in itself? In the second, Can it be easily put into practice?

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Plants are shaped by cultivation and men by education... We are born weak, we need strength; we are born totally unprovided, we need aid; we are born stupid, we need judgment. Everything we do not have at our birth and which we need when we are grown is given us by education.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Reason developed and cultivated will always be the most powerful curb to the passions: this is the compass of all mankind.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
The strongest is never strong enough to be always the master, unless he transforms his strength into right, and obedience into duty.

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
In Genoa, the word, libertas can be read on the front of prisons and on the fetters of galley-slaves. The application of this motto is fine and just.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
The English people believes itself to be free; it is gravely mistaken; it is free only during election of members of parliament; as soon as the members are elected, the people is enslaved; it is nothing. In the brief moment of its freedom, the English people makes such a use of that freedom that it deserves to lose it.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Days of absence, sad and dreary,
Clothed in sorrow's dark array,—
Days of absence, I am weary:
She I love is far away.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
A man says what he knows, a woman says what will please.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Everything is good as it leaves the hands of the author of things, everything degenerates in the hands of man.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Should I live for centuries, the sweet period of my youth would not be reborn, nor effaced from my memory.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Habit accustoms us to everything. What we see too much, we no longer imagine; and it is only imagination which makes us feel the ills of others. It is thus by dint of seeing death and suffering that priests and doctors become pitiless.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
The only moral lesson which is suited for a child — the most important lesson for every time of life — is this: 'Never hurt anybody'.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
A man speaks of what he knows, a woman of what pleases her: the one requires knowledge, the other taste.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Knowledge, wit, and courage alone excite our admiration; and thou, sweet and modest Virtue, remainest without honors.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
The sowing of wild oats is necessary in the life of a man. Libertinism is a leaven that ferments sooner or later.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
I would rather be a man of paradoxes than a man of prejudices.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
The first man who, having fenced in a piece of land, said, "This is mine," and found people naïve enough to believe him, that man was the true founder of civil society.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
The source of all passions is sensitiveness: it is the errors of imagination that transform them into vices.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
A small number of men and women think for the million; through them the million speak and act.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
I remembered the way out suggested by a great princess when told that the peasants had no bread: "Well, let them eat cake".

Jean-Jacques Rousseau