Jean-Jacques Rousseau Quotes

209 Sourced Quotes

To renounce liberty is to renounce being a man, to surrender the rights of humanity and even its duties.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
The mechanism she employs is much more powerful than ours, for all her levers move the human heart.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
To study men, we must look close by; to study man, we must learn to look afar; if we are to discover essential characteristics, we must first observe differences.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Our island is this earth; and the most striking object we behold is the sun. As soon as we pass beyond our immediate surroundings, one or both of these must meet our eye. Thus the philosophy of most savage races is mainly directed to imaginary divisions of the earth or to the divinity of the sun.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
It is the path of the passions which has led me to philosophy.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
All passions are good when one masters them; all are bad when one is a slave to them.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
If there is in this world a well-attested account, it is that of vampires. Nothing is lacking: official reports, affidavits of well-known people, of surgeons, of priests, of magistrates; the judicial proof is most complete. And with all that, who is there who believes in vampires?

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Tranquility is found also in dungeons; but is that enough to make them desirable places to live in?

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
The visible order of the universe proclaims a supreme intelligence.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Provided a man is not mad, he can be cured of every folly but vanity; there is no cure for this but experience, if indeed there is any cure for it at all.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
The thirst after happiness is never extinguished in the heart of man.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
How sweet it would be to live in society if the countenance always reflected the disposition, if decency were virtue, and if our maxims were our rules of action.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
As a general rule—never substitute the symbol for the thing signified, unless it is impossible to show the thing itself; for the child's attention is so taken up with the symbol that he will forget what it signifies.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Women have the same desires as men, but do not have the same right to express them.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
As soon as any man says of the affairs of the State "What does it matter to me?" the State may be given up for lost.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Gratitude is a duty which ought to be paid, but which none have a right to expect.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Philosophy teaches us to bear with calmness — the misfortunes of our friends.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
At sixteen, the adolescent knows about suffering because he himself has suffered, but he barely knows that other beings also suffer.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Gratitude is indeed a duty which we are bound to pay, but which benefactors cannot exact.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Even if each man could alienate himself, he could not alienate his children: they are born men and free; their liberty belongs to them, and no one but they has the right to dispose of it.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Through the fortunate effect of my frankness, I had the rarest and surest opportunity to know a man well, which is to study him at leisure in his private life and living, so to speak, with himself. For he share himself without reservation and made me feel as much at home in his house as in mine. I had almost no other abode than his own.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Self-love makes more libertines than love.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
The abuse of books kills science. Believing that we know what we have read, we believe that we can dispense with learning it.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Yes, if the life and death of Socrates are those of a wise man, the life and death of Jesus are those of a god.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
He thinks like a philosopher, but governs like a king.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
I know my heart, and have studied mankind; I am not made like any one I have been acquainted with, perhaps like no one in existence; if not better, I at least claim originality, and whether Nature did wisely in breaking the mould with which she formed me, can only be determined after having read this work.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
In respect of riches, no citizen shall ever be wealthy enough to buy another, and none poor enough to be forced to sell himself.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
If there were a people of gods, they would govern themselves democratically: so perfect a government is not suitable to men.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
The right of conquest has no foundation other than the right of the strongest.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
In a well governed state, there are few punishments, not because there are many pardons, but because criminals are rare; it is when a state is in decay that the multitude of crimes is a gaurantee of impunity.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau