Jean-Jacques Rousseau Quotes
We seek knowledge only because we desire enjoyment, and it is impossible to conceive why a person who has neither desires nor fears would take the trouble to reason.
O love, if I regret the age when one savors you, it is not for the hour of pleasure, but for the one that follows it.
Laws are always useful to those who possess and vexatious to those who have nothing.
The first sentiment of man was that of his existence, his first care that of preserving it.
The first man, who, after enclosing a piece of ground, took it into his head to say, "This is mine, " and found people simple enough to believe him, was the true founder of civil society.
Gratitude is a duty which ought to be paid but which none have a right to expect.
I have never thought, for my part, that man's freedom consists in his being able to do whatever he wills, but that he should not, by any human power, be forced to do what is against his will.
I would rather be a man of paradoxes than a man of prejudices.
Civilization is a hopeless race to discover remedies for the evils it produces.
Among the many short cuts to science, we badly need someone to teach us the art of learning with difficulty.
Free people, remember this maxim: we may acquire liberty, but it is never recovered if it is once lost.
She was dull, unattractive, couldn't tell the time, count money or tie her own shoe laces... But I loved her
As she put it, she knew of nothing so ravishing as having a child whom she could whip whenever she was in a bad mood.("The Queen Fantasque")
If there were a nation of Gods, it would govern itself democratically. A government so perfect is not suited to men.
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 a fire is guilty of suicide?
Truth is an homage that the good man pays to his own dignity.
Everything is good as it comes from the hands of the Maker of the world, but degenerates once it gets into the hands of man
To write a good love letter you ought to begin without knowing what you mean to say and to finish without knowing what you have written.
To renounce liberty is to renounce being a man, to surrender the rights of humanity and even its duties.
To renounce freedom is to renounce one's humanity, one's rights as a man and equally one's duties.
Little privations are easily endured when the heart is better treated than the body.
There are times when I am so unlike myself that I might be taken for someone else of an entirely opposite character.
Gratitude is a duty which ought to be paid, but which none have a right to expect.
But in some great souls, who consider themselves as citizens of the world, and forcing the imaginary barriers that separate people from people...
The happiest is he who suffers the least pain the most miserable he who enjoys the least pleasure.
We cannot teach children the danger of lying to men without feeling as men, the greater danger of lying to children.
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.
I am not made like any of those I have seen. I venture to believe that I am not made like any of those who are in existence. If I am not better, at least I am different.
Money is the seed of money, and the first guinea is sometimes more difficult to acquire than the second million.
He who is the most slow in making a promise is the most faithful in the performance of it.
A taste for ostentation is rarely associated in the same souls with a taste for honesty
Although modesty is natural to man, it is not natural to children. Modesty only begins with the knowledge of evil.
Take from the philosopher the pleasure of being heard and his desire for knowledge ceases.
