Jean-Jacques Rousseau Quotes

Or, rather, let us be more simple and less vain.

To live is not breathing it is action.

I will say little of the importance of a good education; nor will I stop to prove that the current one is bad. Countless others have done so before me, and I do not like to fill a book with things everybody knows. I will note that for the longest time there has been nothing but a cry against the established practice without anyone taking it upon himself to propose a better one. The literature and the learning of our age tend much more to destruction than to edification.

The world is the book of women. Whatever knowledge they may possess is more commonly acquired by observation than by reading.

If all were perfect Christians, individuals would do their duty; the people would be obedient to the laws, the magistrates incorrupt, and there would be neither vanity nor luxury in such a state.

I only see clearly what I remember.

The truths of the Scriptures are so marked and inimitable, that the inventor would be more of a miraculous character than the hero.

What good would it be to possess the whole universe if one were its only survivor?

In any case, frequent punishments are a sign of weakness or slackness in the government. There is no man so bad that he cannot be made good for something. No man should be put to death, even as an example, if he can be left to live without danger to society.

Taste is, so to speak, the microscope of the judgment.

There is one further distinguishing characteristic of man which is very specific indeed and about which there can be no dispute, and that is the faculty of self-improvement - a faculty which, with the help of circumstance, progressively develops all our other faculties.

Every man has a right to risk his own life for the preservation of it.

It is in man's heart that the life of nature's spectacle exists; to see it, one must feel it.

Social man lives constantly outside himself.

Leave those vain moralists, my friend, and return to the depth of your soul: that is where you will always rediscover the source of the sacred fire which so often inflamed us with love of the sublime virtues; that is where you will see the eternal image of true beauty, the contemplation of which inspires us with a holy enthusiasm.

As evening approached, I came down from the heights of the island, and I liked then to go and sit on the shingle in some secluded spot by the lake; there the noise of the waves and the movement of the water, taking hold of my senses and driving all other agitation from my soul, would plunge me into delicious reverie in which night often stole upon me unawares.

There is peace in dungeons, but is that enough to make dungeons desirable?

Laws are always useful to those who possess and vexatious to those who have nothing.

Base souls have no faith in great individuals.

We are born, so to speak, twice over; born into existence, and born into life; born a human being, and born a man.

Rather suffer an injustice than commit one.

He who pretends to look upon death without fear, lies

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.

Love, known to the person by whom it is inspired, becomes more bearable.

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.

This dog, which, although no beauty, was of an uncommon breed, I had made my friend and companion; and it certainly deserved the name better than the majority of those who had assumed it.

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.

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.

I have suffered too much in this world not to hope for another.

If I am part of a group of 100 people, do 99 people have the right to sentence me to death, just because they are majority?

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

Teach him to live rather than to avoid death: life is not breath, but action, the use of our senses, our mind, our faculties, every part of ourselves which makes us conscious of our being. Life consists less in length of days than in the keen sense of living. A man maybe buried at a hundred and may never have lived at all. He would have fared better had he died young.

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.

Each member of the community gives himself to it at the instant of its constitution, just as he actually is, himself and all his forces, including all goods in his possession.

Our greatest evils flow from ourselves.

Chemistry... is like the maid occupied with daily civilisation; she is busy with fertilisers, medicines, glass, insecticides ... for she dispenses the recipes.

Never did I think so much, exist so much, be myself so much as in the journeys I have made alone and on foot. Walking has something about it which animates and enlivens my ideas. I can hardly think while I am still; my body must be in motion to move my mind.

The empire of woman is an empire of softness, of address, of complacency. Her commands are caresses, her menaces are tears.

Peter had a genius for imitation; but he lacked true genius, which is creative and makes all from nothing.

I may not amount to much, but at least I am unique.

The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless.

God made me and broke the mold.

Finance is a slave's word.

A person who can break wind is not dead.

We can never put ourselves in the shoes of children; we cannot fathom their thoughts, we lend them ours; and always following ourown reasoning, we stuff their heads with extravagance and error.

Everything made by man may be destroyed by man; there are no ineffaceable characters except those engraved by nature; and nature makes neither princes nor rich men nor great lords.

He who eats in idleness that which he himself has not earned, steals it; and a capitalist whom the state pays for doing nothing differs little in my eyes from a brigand, who lives at the expense of passers-by.

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.