Jean-Jacques Rousseau Quotes

209 Sourced Quotes

People who know little are usually great talkers, while men who know much say little.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Men, be kind to your fellow-men; this is your first duty, kind to every age and station, kind to all that is not foreign to humanity. What wisdom can you find that is greater than kindness?

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Although modesty is natural to man, it is not natural to children. Modesty only begins with the knowledge of evil.... Blushes are the sign of guilt; true innocence is ashamed of nothing.

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

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Usurpers always bring about or select troublous times to get passed, under cover of the public terror, destructive laws, which the people would never adopt in cold blood. The moment chosen is one of the surest means of distinguishing the work of the legislator from that of the tyrant.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
There exists one book, which, to my taste, furnishes the happiest treatise of natural education. What then is this marvelous book? Is it Aristotle? Is it Pliny, is it Buffon? No—it is Robinson Crusoe.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
There is no subjection so perfect as that which keeps the appearance of freedom.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Teach by doing whenever you can, and only fall back upon words when doing it is out of the question.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
The animals you eat are not those who devour others; you do not eat the carnivorous beasts, you take them as your pattern. You only hunger for the sweet and gentle creatures which harm no one, which follow you, serve you, and are devoured by you as the reward of their service.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
It is as if my heart and my brain did not belong to the same person. Feelings come quicker than lightning and fill my soul, but they bring me no illumination; they burn me and dazzle me.

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
The right of conquest has no foundation other than the right of the strongest.

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
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
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
He thinks like a philosopher, but governs like a king.

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
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
Self-love makes more libertines than love.

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

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
Philosophy teaches us to bear with calmness — the misfortunes of our friends.

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

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

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
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