Rousseau Is Quotes

Sometimes she could swear that she saw, in Joe Grey's eyes, a judgment far too perceptive, a watchfulness too aware and intense for any cat.
Charlie didn't understand what it was about those two [cats]. Both had a presence that set them apart from other felines.
Maybe she just knew them better. Maybe all cats had that quality of awareness, when you knew them. ~ Shirley Rousseau Murphy

I may not amount to much, but at least I am unique. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Most nations, as well as people are impossible only in their youth; they become incorrigible as they grow older. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Being wealthy isn't just a question of having lots of money. It's a question of what we want. Wealth isn't an absolute, it's relative to desire. Every time we seek something that we can't afford, we can be counted as poor, how much money we may actually have. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Europe had fallen back into the barbarity of the first ages. People from this part of world, so enlightened today, lived a few centuries ago in a state worse than ignorance. Some sort of learned jargon much more despicable than ignorance had usurped the name of knowledge and set up an almost invincible obstacle in the way of its return. A revolution was necessary to bring men back to common sense, and it finally came from a quarter where one would least expect it. It was the stupid Muslim, the eternal blight on learning, who brought about its rebirth among us. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Voltaire, Shelley, Wordsworth, Byron, Rousseau ... established a new connection between mankind and the universe, and the result was a vast release of energy. The sun was reborn to man and so was the moon. To man, the very sun goes stale, becomes a habit. Comes a saviour, a seer, and the very sun dances new in heaven. ~ D.H. Lawrence

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

I can discover nothing in any mere animal but an ingenious machine, to which nature has given senses to wind itself up, and guard, to a certain degree, against everything that might destroy or disorder it. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

I will explain myself; but this will be to take the most useless, most superfluous precaution; for everything that I will tell you could only be understood by those who do not need to be told ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

If Socrates died like a philosopher, Jesus Christ died like a God. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

We cannot work for others without working for ourselves. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Entirely taken up by the present, I could remember nothing; I had no distinct notion of myself as a person, nor had I the least idea of what had just happened to me. I did not know who I was, nor where I was; I felt neither pain, fear, nor anxiety. I watched my blood flowing as I might have watched a stream, without even thinking that the blood had anything to do with me. I felt throughout my whole being such a wonderful calm, that whenever I recall this feeling I can find nothing to compare with it in all the pleasures that stir our lives. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Meanwhile, two other great currents in political thought, had a decisive significance on the development of socialist ideas: Liberalism, which had powerfully stimulated advanced minds in the Anglo-Saxon countries, Holland and Spain in particular, and Democracy in the sense. to which Rousseau gave expression in his Social Contract, and which found its most influential representatives in the leaders of French Jacobinism. While Liberalism in its social theories started off from the individual and wished to limit the state's activities to a minimum, Democracy took its stand on an abstract collective concept, Rousseau's general will, which it sought to fix in the national state. Liberalism and Democracy were pre-eminently political concepts, and since most of the original adherents of both did scarcely consider the economic conditions of society, the further development of these conditions could not be practically reconciled with the original principles of Democracy, and still less with those of Liberalism. Democracy with its motto of equality of all citizens before the law, and Liberalism with its right of man over his own person, both were wrecked on the realities of capitalist economy. As long as millions of human beings in every country have to sell their labour to a small minority of owners, and sink into the most wretched misery if they can find no buyers, the so-called equality before the law remains merely a pious fraud, since the laws are made by those who find themselves ~ Rudolf Rocker

I think it impossible that the great monarchies of Europe can last much longer. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

He certainly deserved the name better than those who had assumed it. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

One does not drink. One gives a kiss to his glass, and the wine returns a caress to you. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

In any real democracy, magistracy isn't a benefit - it's a burdensome responsibility that can't fairly be imposed on one individual rather than another ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

It was Rousseau who was largely responsible for the problem by giving currency to the idea that freedom can exist without responsibility and discipline. ~ Colin Wilson

Break the chains of your body and you will break the chains of your mind." Rousseau ~ Dianne Whelan

I prefer liberty with danger than peace with slavery. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

But, if strength of body be, with some show of reason, the boast of men, why are women so infatuated as to be proud of a defect? Rousseau has furnished them with a plausible excuse, which could only have occurred to a man, whose imagination had been allowed to run wild, and refine on the impressions made by exquisite senses, that they might, forsooth have a pretext for yielding to a natural appetite without violating a romantic species of modesty, which gratifies the pride and libertinism of man. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft

Government originated in the attempt to find a form of association that defends and protects the person and property of each with the common force of all. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

To discover the rules of society that are best suited to nations, there would need to exist a superior intelligence, who could understand the passions of men without feeling any of them, who had no affinity with our nature but knew it to the full, whose happiness was independent of ours, but who would nevertheless make our happiness his concern, who would be content to wait in the fullness of time for a distant glory, and to labour in one age to enjoy the fruits in another. Gods would be needed to give men laws. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

However, it was the great 18th century social philosophers John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau who brought the concept of a social contract between citizens and governments sharply into political thinking, paving the way for popular democracy and constitutional republicanism. ~ Simon Mainwaring

The swamp roses, Gillie. It was the mare found them. She - if she hadn't run off - it was almost as if she meant me to see them."
"Are you saying? ... "
"I don't know what I'm saying. Yes," she cried, a gay silliness taking her. Drunk with the music and the dancing, drunk with his closeness, she laughed up at him. It was just as in the stories, a kind of magic just like ... " and then she stared at him, confounded.
"Just like what?"
"But in the stories ... "
"In the stories ... what?"
"In the stories ... "
"In the stories there's a prince," Gillie answered quietly. He held her away then. "So the story has come true. ~ Shirley Rousseau Murphy

Rousseau defined civilizations as when people build fences. ~ Haruki Murakami

He who wills the end, wills the means also, and the means must involve some risks, and even some losses. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Neither Rousseau nor Robespierre was capable of dreaming of a goodness beyond virtue, just as they were unable to imagine that radical evil would 'partake nothing of the sordid or sensual' (Melville), that there could be wickedness beyond vice. ~ Hannah Arendt

Hatred, as well as love, renders its votaries credulous. ~ 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 interest and the feelings are not due to colors; the lines of a painting that move us move us even more in a print. ~ Henri 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

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