Jean-Jacques Rousseau Quotes

Fame is but the breath of people, and that often unwholesome.

God made me and broke the mold.

We should not teach children the sciences; but give them a taste for them.

We cannot work for others without working for ourselves.

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?

Nature never deceives us; it is we who deceive ourselves.

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

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

Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains. Those who think themselves the masters of others are indeed greater slaves than they.

Universal silence is taken to imply the consent of the people.

Remorse sleeps during prosperity but awakes bitter consciousness during adversity.

Take the course opposite to custom and you will almost always do well.

The man is best served who has no occasion to put the hands of others at the end of his own arms.

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

He who has the base necessities of life should pay nothing; taxation on him who has a surplus may, if need be; extend to everything beyond necessities.

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

Little privations are easily endured when the heart is better treated than the body.

There is a period of life when we go back as we advance. [Fr., Il est un terme de la vie au-dela duquel en retrograde en avancant.]

Finance is a slave's word.

As long as there are rich people in the world, they will be desirous of distinguishing themselves from the poor.

The body politic, as well as the human body, begins to die as soon as it is born, and carries itself the causes of its destruction.

The want of occupation is no less the plague of society than of solitude.

A paralyzed man who wants to walk OR an agile man who does not want to walk will both remain neutral in nature.

There is no evildoer who could not be made good for something.

To endure is the first thing that a child ought to learn, and that which he will have the most need to know.

All through life a man has need of a counsellor and guide.

If there wasn't a God we would have to invent one to keep people sane.

Living is not breathing but doing.

It is easier to conquer than to administer. With enough leverage, a finger could overturn the world; but to support the world, one must have the shoulders of Hercules.

I think we cannot too strongly attack superstition, which is the disturber of society; nor too highly respect genuine religion, which is the support of it.

Do I dare set forth here the most important, the most useful rule of all education? It is not to save time, but to squander it.

Provided a man is not mad, he can be cured of every folly but vanity.

Men, in general, are not this or that, they are what they are made to be.

Anticipation and Hope are born twins.

Girls must be thwarted early in life.

By doing good we become good.

Plant and your spouse plants with you; weed and you weed alone.

Remorse sleeps during a prosperous period but wakes up in adversity.

The money that we possess is the instrument of liberty, that which we lack and strive to obtain is the instrument of slavery.

The happiest is he who suffers least; the most miserable is he who enjoys least.

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

The man who gets the most out of life is not the one who has lived it longest, but the one who has felt life most deeply.

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.

There are times when I am so unlike myself that I might be taken for someone else of an entirely opposite character.

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

Women speak at an earlier age, more easily, and more agreeably than men; they are accused also of speaking more; this is as it should be, and I willingly change the reproach into a eulogy.

The man who meditates is a depraved animal.

We do not know what really good or bad fortune is.

Innocence is ashamed of nothing.

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.