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Jean-Jacques Rousseau Quotes

Total quotes: 23
“A country cannot subsist well without liberty, nor liberty without virtue.”
— Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Tagged: country, Liberty, Freedom, Virtue
“Gratitude is a duty which ought to be paid, but which none have a right to expect.”
— Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract and The First and Second Discourses
Tagged: Gratitude, Expectation, Duty
“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, Emile: Or On Education
Tagged: Living, Life, actions, Time
“What good would it be to possess the whole universe if one were its only survivor?”
— Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Tagged: Universe, kindness, Goodness, Survivor
“Why should we build our happiness on the opinons of others, when we can find it in our own hearts?”
— Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract and Discourses
Tagged: Happiness, Opinions, heart
“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, The Social Contract and Discourses
Tagged: Freedom, Liberty, Master, Consent, Slave
“She was dull, unattractive, couldn't tell the time, count money or tie her own shoe laces... But I loved her.”
— Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Tagged: Love, Mystery, romance, unattractive
“...in respect of riches, no citizen shall ever be wealthy enough to buy another, and none poor enough to be forced to sell himself.”
— Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract and Discourses
Tagged: Slavery, Wealth, Equality, Poverty
“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, Confessions
Tagged: heart, Brain, Change, Feelings
“My idea of happiness is...never to have to do anything I don't wish to do.”
— Jean-Jacques Rousseau, A Discourse on Inequality
Tagged: Life, Happiness
“It is too difficult to think nobly when one thinks only of earning a living.”
— Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Confessions (Penguin Classics)
Tagged: Money, noble, kindness
“In truth, laws are always useful to those with possessions and harmful to those who have nothing; from which it follows that the social state is advantageous to men only when all possess something and none has too much.”
— Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract and Discourses
Tagged: Truth, Laws, Inequality, state, Social state
“I thank you for the visit you persuaded me to make, and my thanks might have been warmer if you had not made me pay for it so dearly.”
— Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Intellectuals: From Marx and Tolstoy to Sartre and Chomsky
Tagged: Life
“There are times when I am so unlike myself that I might be taken for someone else of an entirely opposite character.”
— Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Confessions
Tagged: Personality, Personal Development, self, Change, Flexibility
“Once you teach people to say what they do not understand, it is easy enough to get them to say anything you like.”
— Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile: Or On Education
Tagged: Teach, Knowledge, Persuasion
“The only moral lesson which is suited for a child--the most important lesson for every time of life--is this: 'Never hurt anybody.'”
— Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile: Or On Education
Tagged: Moral Lesson, Advice, Growing Up, Life
“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.”
— Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Reveries of the Solitary Walker
Tagged: Freedom, Will, Human Power, Compulsion, Liberty
“Virtue is a state of war, and to live in it means one always has some battle to wage against oneself.”
— Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Tagged: Virtue, War, Battle
“An honest man nearly always thinks justly.”
— Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Tagged: Honesty, Man, Just
“I would rather be a man of paradoxes than a man of prejudices.”
— Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile: Or On Education
Tagged: Paradox, Prejudice, character
“In any case, frequent punishments are a sign of weakness or slackness in the government. There is no man so bad that he cannot be made good for something. No man should be put to death, even as an example, if he can be left to live without danger to society.”
— Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract
Tagged: punishment, Death Penalty, Government, chances
“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, Reveries of the Solitary Walker
Tagged: Intention, Result
“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.”
— Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Confessions
Tagged: different, Personality, Nature
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