70+ Jean-Jacques Rousseau Quotes to Inspire Freedom, Nature, and the Human Spirit
- June 28, 1712 – July 2, 1778
- Born in Geneva
- Philosopher, political philosopher, writer, composer
- He advocated popular sovereignty in “The Social Contract” and influenced the French Revolution and modern democracy.
- “The English are predisposed to pride, the French to vanity.”
- “All of my misfortunes come from having thought too well of my fellows.”
- “To endure is the first thing that a child ought to learn, and that which he will have the most need to know.”
- “I only see clearly what I remember.”
- “You forget that the fruits belong to all and that the land belongs to no one.”
- “Take from the philosopher the pleasure of being heard and his desire for knowledge ceases.”
- “I have always said and felt that true enjoyment can not be described.”
- “Our affections as well as our bodies are in perpetual flux.”
- “Although modesty is natural to man, it is not natural to children. Modesty only begins with the knowledge of evil.”
- “Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.”
- “Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains.”
- “Childhood is the sleep of reason.”
- “Happiness: a good bank account, a good cook, and a good digestion.”
- “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.”
- “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.”
- “Fame is but the breath of people, and that often unwholesome.”
- “I hate books; they only teach us to talk about things we know nothing about.”
- “Those that are most slow in making a promise are the most faithful in the performance of it.”
- “When something an affliction happens to you, you either let it defeat you, or you defeat it.”
- “Plant and your spouse plants with you; weed and you weed alone.”
- “Force does not constitute right… obedience is due only to legitimate powers.”
- “Free people, remember this maxim: we may acquire liberty, but it is never recovered if it is once lost.”
- “We are born, so to speak, twice over; born into existence, and born into life; born a human being, and born a man.”
- “Take the course opposite to custom and you will almost always do well.”
- “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.”
- “Base souls have no faith in great individuals.”
- “What wisdom can you find that is greater than kindness?”
- “It is unnatural for a majority to rule, for a majority can seldom be organized and united for specific action, and a minority can.”
- “It is unnatural for a majority to rule, for a majority can seldom be organized and united for specific action, and a minority can.”
- “Virtue is a state of war, and to live in it we have always to combat with ourselves.”
- “Falsehood has an infinity of combinations, but truth has only one mode of being.”
- “Absolute silence leads to sadness. It is the image of death.”
- “Reading, solitude, idleness, a soft and sedentary life, intercourse with women and young people, these are perilous paths for a young man, and these lead him constantly into danger.”
- “Our greatest evils flow from ourselves.”
- “Gratitude is a duty which ought to be paid, but which none have a right to expect.”
- “People who know little are usually great talkers, while men who know much say little.”
- “However great a man’s natural talent may be, the act of writing cannot be learned all at once.”
- “Ordinary readers, forgive my paradoxes: one must make them when one reflects; and whatever you may say, I prefer being a man with paradoxes than a man with prejudices.”
- “It is a mania shared by philosophers of all ages to deny what exists and to explain what does not exist.”
- “We do not know what is really good or bad fortune.”
- “The training of children is a profession, where we must know how to waste time in order to save it.”
- “The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless.”
- “Money is the seed of money, and the first guinea is sometimes more difficult to acquire than the second million.”
- “I undertake the same project as Montaigne, but with an aim contrary to his own: for he wrote his Essays only for others, and I write my reveries only for myself.”
- “Insults are the arguments employed by those who are in the wrong.”
- “It is too difficult to think nobly when one thinks only of earning a living.”
- “Most nations, as well as people are impossible only in their youth; they become incorrigible as they grow older.”
- “We pity in others only the those evils which we ourselves have experienced.”
- “We pity in others only the those evils which we ourselves have experienced.”
- “The English think they are free. They are free only during the election of members of parliament.”
- “Remorse sleeps during prosperity but awakes bitter consciousness during adversity.”
- “The person who has lived the most is not the one with the most years but the one with the richest experiences.”
- “I have resolved on an enterprise that has no precedent and will have no imitator. I want to set before my fellow human beings a man in every way true to nature; and that man will be myself.”
- “Whoever blushes is already guilty; true innocence is ashamed of nothing.”
- “Whoever blushes is already guilty; true innocence is ashamed of nothing.”
- “No man has any natural authority over his fellow men.”
- “Every man has a right to risk his own life for the preservation of it.”
- “I may be no better, but at least I am different.”
- “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.”
- “We should not teach children the sciences; but give them a taste for them.”
- “Heroes are not known by the loftiness of their carriage; the greatest braggarts are generally the merest cowards.”
- “How many famous and high-spirited heroes have lived a day too long?”
- “Our will is always for our own good, but we do not always see what that is.”
- “Nature never deceives us; it is we who deceive ourselves.”
- “Religious persecutors are not believers, they are rascals.”
- “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.”
- “God made me and broke the mold.”
- “A feeble body weakens the mind.”
- “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?”
- “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 long remained a child, and I am still one in many respects.”