Jean Jacques Rousseau Quotes

Great men never make bad use of their superiority. They see it and feel it and are not less modest. The more they have, the more they know their own deficiencies. ~ 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

Our greatest evils flow from ourselves. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

No one cares for reality, everyone stakes his essence on illusion. Slaves and dupes of their self-love, men live not in order to live but to make other believe they have lived! ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The earth left to its own natural fertility and covered with immense woods, that no hatchet ever disfigured, offers at every step food and shelter to every species of animals. Men, dispersed among them, observe and imitate their industry, and thus rise to the instinct of beasts; with this advantage, that, whereas every species of beasts is confined to one peculiar instinct, man, who perhaps has not any that particularly belongs to him, appropriates to himself those of all other animals, and lives equally upon most of the different aliments, which they only divide among themselves; a circumstance which qualifies him to find his subsistence, with more ease than any of them. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Too much apparatus, designed to guide us in experiments and to supplement the exactness of our senses, makes us neglect to use those senses ... The more ingenious our apparatus, the coarser and more unskillful are our senses. We surround ourselves with tools and fail to use those which nature has provided every one of us. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

All our wisdom consists in servile prejudices. All our practices are only subjection, impediment, and constraint. Civil man is born, lives, and dies in slavery. At his birth he is sewed in swaddling clothes; at his death he is nailed in a coffin. So long as he keeps his human shape, he is enchained by our institutions. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Let it not, therefore, be said that the Sovereign is not subject to the laws of his State; since the contrary is a true proposition of the right of nations, which flattery has sometimes attacked but good princes have always defended as the tutelary divinity of their dominions. How much more legitimate is it to say with the wise Plato, that the perfect felicity of a kingdom consists in the obedience of subjects to their prince, and of the prince to the laws, and in the laws being just and constantly directed to the public good! ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

I ask: which of the two, civil or natural life, is more likely to become insufferable to those who live it? We see about us practically no people who do not complain about their existence; many even deprive themselves of it to the extent they are able, and the combination of divine and human laws is hardly enough to stop this disorder. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

In the natural order men are all equal and their common calling is that of manhood, so that a well-educated man cannot fail to do well in that calling and those related to it. It matters little to me whether my pupil is intended for the army, the church, or the law. Before his parents chose a calling for him nature called him to be a man. Life is the trade I would teach him. When he leaves me, I grant you, he will be neither a magistrate, a soldier, nor a priest; he will be a man. All that becomes a man he will learn as quickly as another. In vain will fate change his station, he will always be in his right place. "Occupavi te, fortuna, atque cepi; omnes-que aditus tuos interclusi, ut ad me aspirare non posses. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Many men, seemingly impelled by fortune, hasten forward to meet misfortune half way. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Our greatest misfortunes come to us from ourselves. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Real wisdom is not the knowledge of everything, but the knowledge of which things in life are necessary, which are less necessary, and which are completely unnecessary to know. Among the most necessary knowledge is the knowledge of how to live well, that is, how to produce the least possible evil and the greatest goodness in one's life. At present, people study useless sciences, but forget to study this, the most important knowledge. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

[T]he man who meditates is a depraved animal. ~ 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

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

Insults are the arguments employed by those who are in the wrong. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

People who know little are usually great talkers, while men who know much say little. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Children are taught to look down on their nurses (nannies), to treat them as mere servants. When their task is completed the child is withdrawn or the nurse is dismissed. Her visits to her foster-child are discouraged by a cold reception. After a few years the child never sees her again. The mother expects to take her place, and to repair by her cruelty the results of her own neglect. But she is greatly mistaken; she is making an ungrateful foster-child, not an affectionate son; she is teaching him ingratitude, and she is preparing him to despise at a later day the mother who bore him, as he now despises his nurse. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Whatever may be our natural talents, the art of writing is not acquired all at once. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

What wisdom can you find greater than kindness. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Everything we do not have at our birth and which we need when we are grown is given to us by education. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Happy am I, for every time I meditate on governments, I always find new reasons in my inquiries for loving my own country. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The spectacle of nature, by growing quite familiar to him, becomes at last equally indifferent. It is constantly the same order, constantly the same revolutions; he has not sense enough to feel surprise at the sight of the greatest wonders; and it is not in his mind we must look for that philosophy, which man must have to know how to observe once, what he has every day seen. Jean Jacques Rousseau, On the Inequality among Mankind, Ch. 1, 20. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

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

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

The truth brings no man a fortune. ~ 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 ... (Bk2:3) ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

All my misfortunes come of having thought too well of my fellows. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Well, the truth is no road to fortune, and the populace doesn't give
out ambassadorships, university chairs, or pensions. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Our greatest evil flows from ourselves. ~ 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

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

I have entered upon a performance which is without example, whose
accomplishment will have no imitator. I mean to present my
fellow-mortals with a man in all the integrity of nature; and this man
shall be myself.

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.

Whenever the last trumpet shall sound, I will present myself before the
sovereign judge with this book in my hand, and loudly proclaim, thus have
I acted; these were my thoughts; such was I. With equal freedom and
veracity have I related what was laudable or wicked, I have concealed no
crimes, added no virtues; and if I have sometimes introduced superfluous
ornament, it was merely to occupy a void occasioned by defect of memory:
I may have supposed that certain, which I only knew to be probable, but
have never asserted as truth, a conscious falsehood. Such as I was, I
have declared myself; sometimes vile and despicable, at others, virtuous,
generous and sublime; even as thou hast read my inmost soul: Power
eternal! assemble round thy throne an innumerable throng of my
fellow-mortals, let them listen to my confessions, let them blush at my
depravity, ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Gracefulness cannot subsist without ease; delicacy is not debility; nor must a woman be sick in order to please. Infirmity, and sickness may excite our pity, but desire and pleasure require the bloom and vigor of health. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Universal silence must be taken to imply the consent of the people. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

When one has suffered or fears suffering, one pities those who suffer; but when one is suffering, one pities only oneself. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

It is not possible for minds degraded by a host of trivial concerns to ever rise to anything great. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The science of government is only a science of combinations, of applications, and of exceptions, according to times, places and circumstances. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

For if men needed speech in order to learn to think, they had a still greater need for knowing how to think in order to discover the art of speaking - Rousseau ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

To abstain that we may enjoy is the epicurianism of reason. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Two things, almost incompatible, are united in me in a manner which I am unable to understand: a very ardent temperament, lively and tumultuous passions, and, at the same time, slowly developed and confused ideas, which never present themselves until it is too late. One might say that my heart and my mind do not belong to the same person. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Princes always are always happy to see developing among their subjects the taste for agreeable arts and for superfluities which do not result in the export of money. For quite apart from the fact that with these they nourish that spiritual pettiness so appropriate for servitude, they know very well that all the needs which people give themselves are so many chains binding them. When Alexander wished to keep the Ichthyophagi dependent on him, he forced them to abandon fishing and to nourish themselves on foods common to other people. And no one has been able to subjugate the savages in America, who go around quite naked and live only from what their hunting provides. In fact, what yoke could be imposed on men who have no need of anything? ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Patience patience quotes is bitter, but its fruit is sweet. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

[When anything happens, we interpret it as good or bad, but ... ] We do not know what is really good or bad fortune. [Only the future can decide. For example, what appears to be bad today may in fact lead us to a greater good tomorrow and by the very act of thinking and planning in that positive way, we can help make that good future come true.] ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The person who has lived the most is not the one with the most years but the one with the richest experiences. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The English are predisposed to pride, the French to vanity. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The continual emotion that is felt in the theater excites us, enervates us, enfeebles us, and makes us less able to resist our passions. And the sterile interest taken in virtue serves only to satisfy our vanity without obliging us to practice it. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

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. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The happiest is he who suffers least; the most miserable is he who enjoys least. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The majesty of the Scriptures strikes me with admiration, as the purity of the gospel has its influence on my heart. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

No true believer could be intolerant or a persecutor. If I were a magistrate and the law carried the death penalty against atheists, I would begin by sending to the stake whoever denounced another. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

We are born weak, we need strength; helpless, we need aid; foolish, we need reason. All that we lack at birth, all that we need when we come to man's estate, is the gift of education. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The imagination which causes so many ravages among us, never speaks to the heart of savages Pt.1, 41 ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

I may be no better, but at least I am different. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Sacrifice life to truth. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

So long as one remains in the same condition, the inclinations which result from habit and are the least natural to us can be kept; but as soon as the situation changes, habit ceases and the natural returns.
Education is certainly only habit. Now are there not people who forget and lose their education? Others who keep it? Where does this difference come from? If the name nature were limited to habits conformable to nature, we would spare ourselves this garble! ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Quit thy childhood, my friend, and wake up! ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

What conclusion is to be drawn from this paradox so worthy of being born in our time; and what will become of virtue when one has to get rich at all cost?
The ancient political thinkers forever spoke of morals and of virtue; ours speak only of commerce and money. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

To live is not to breathe but to act. It is to make use of our organs, our senses, our faculties, of all the parts of ourselves which give us the sentiment of our existence. The man who has lived the most is not he who has counted the most years but he who has most felt life. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Temperance and labor are the two real physicians of man. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

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. ~ 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 man is best served who has no occasion to put the hands of others at the end of his own arms. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

I don't know what is truth,but I can tell you how to find it! ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Government in its infancy had no regular and permanent form. For want of a sufficient fund of philosophy and experience, men could see no further than the present inconveniences, and never thought of providing remedies for future ones, but in proportion as they arose. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

I hate books, for they only teach people to talk about what they don't understand. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

One can buy anything with money except morality. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

"Hence," goes on the professor, "definitions of happiness are interesting." I suppose the best thing to do with that is to let is pass. Me, I never saw a definition of happiness that could detain me after train-time, but that may be a matter of lack of opportunity, of inattention, or of congenital rough luck. If definitions of happiness can keep Professor Phelps on his toes, that is little short of dandy. We might just as well get on along to the next statement, which goes like this: "One of the best" (we are still on definitions of happiness) "was given in my Senior year at college by Professor Timothy Dwight: 'The happiest person is the person who thinks the most interesting thoughts.'" Promptly one starts recalling such Happiness Boys as Nietzche, Socrates, de Maupassant, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, William Blake, and Poe."
-Review of the book, Happiness, by (Professor) William Lyon Phelps. Review title: The Professor Goes in for Sweetness and Light; November 5, 1927 ~ Dorothy Parker

My love for imaginary objects and my facility in lending myself to them ended by disillusioning me with everything around me, and determined that love of solitude which I have retained ever since that time. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us al, and that the earth itself belongs to nobody ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Since these conveniences by becoming habitual had almost entirely ceased to be enjoyable, and at the same time degenerated into true needs, it became much more cruel to be deprived of them than to possess them was sweet, and men were unhappy to lose them without being happy to possess them. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The passions are the voice of the body. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The first step towards vice is to shroud innocent actions in mystery, and whoever likes to conceal something sooner or later has reason to conceal it. ~ 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

Even the soberest judged it requisite to sacrifice one part of their liberty to ensure the other, as a man, dangerously wounded in any of his limbs, readily parts with it to save the rest of his body. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

I say to myself: Who are you to measure infinite power? ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

To live is not merely to breathe; it is to act; it is to make use of our organs, senses, faculties - of all those parts of ourselves which give us the feeling of existence. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Watch a cat when it enters a room for the first time. It searches and smells about, it is not quiet for a moment, it trusts nothing until it has examined and made acquaintance with everything. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Why do you consult [women's] words when it is not their mouths that speak? Consult their eyes, their colour, their breathing, their timid manner, their slight resistance, that is the language nature gave them for your answer. The lips always say 'No,' and rightly so; but the tone is not always the same, and that cannot lie. Has not a woman the same needs as a man, but without the same right to make them known? Her fate would be too cruel if she had no language in which to express her legitimate desires except the words which she dare not utter. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

We do not know either unalloyed happiness or unmitigated misfortune. Everything in this world is a tangled yarn; we taste nothing in its purity; we do not remain two moments in the same state. Our affections as well as bodies, are in a perpetual flux. ~ 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

Savage man, once he has eaten, is at peace with all of nature and the friend of all his fellow humans. Is ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

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

It is true that the genius of assembled men or of peoples is quite different from a man's character in private, and that one would know the human heart very imperfectly if he did not examine it also in the multitude. But it is no less true that one must begin by studying man in order to judge men, and that he who knew each individual's inclinations perfectly could foresee all their effects when combined in the body of the people. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

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

The mind has its needs, just as the body does. The latter are the
foundations of society; from the former emerge the pleasures of
society. While government and laws take care of the security
and the well being of men in groups, the sciences, letters, and
the arts, less despotic and perhaps more powerful, spread
garlands of flowers over the iron chains which weigh men
down, snuffing out in them the feeling of that original liberty for
which they appear to have been born, and make them love their
slavery by turning them into what are called civilized people. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

I hate books; they only teach us to talk about things we know nothing about. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Liberty is like those solid and tasty foods or those full-bodied wines which are appropriate for nourishing and strengthening robust constitutions that are used to them, but which overpower, ruin and intoxicate the weak and delicate who are not suited for them. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Remorse goes to sleep during a prosperous period and wakes up in adversity.
[Fr., Le remords s'endort durant un destin prospere et s'aigrit dans l'adversite.] ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Every man having been born free and master of himself, no one else may under any pretext whatever subject him without his consent. To assert that the son of a slave is born a slave is to assert that he is not born a man. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

He who pretends to look upon death without fear, lies ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

From the first moment of life, men ought to begin learning to deserve to live; and, as at the instant of birth we partake of the rights of citizenship, that instant ought to be the beginning of the exercise of our duty. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

In all the ills that befall us, we are more concerned by the intention than the result. A tile that falls off a roof may injure us more seriously, but it will not wound us so deeply as a stone thrown deliberately by a malevolent hand. The blow may miss, but the intention always strikes home. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

the despot assures his subjects civil tranquillity. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Liberty is obedience to the law which one has laid down for oneself ~ 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

When my reason is afloat, my faith cannot long remain in suspense, and I believe in God as firmly as in any other truth whatever; in short, a thousand motives draw me to the consolatory side, and add the weight of hope to the equilibrium of reason. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Whoever blushes confesses guilt, true innocence never feels shame. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau