Jean-Jacques Rousseau QUOTES

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

2 " Every person has a right to risk their own life for the preservation of it. "

― Jean-Jacques Rousseau

3 " It is too difficult to think nobly when one thinks only of earning a living. "

― Jean-Jacques Rousseau , Confessions

4 " 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

5 " 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 "

― Jean-Jacques Rousseau

6 " I believed that I was approaching the end of my days without having tasted to the full any of the pleasures for which my heart thirsted...without having ever tasted that passion which, through lack of an object, was always suppressed. ...The impossibility of attaining the real persons precipitated me into the land of chimeras; and seeing nothing that existed worthy of my exalted feelings, I fostered them in an ideal world which my creative imagination soon peopled with beings after my own heart. "

― Jean-Jacques Rousseau , Confessions

7 " The truth brings no man a fortune. "

― Jean-Jacques Rousseau

8 " Truth is an homage that the good man pays to his own dignity. "

― Jean-Jacques Rousseau , Reveries of the Solitary Walker

9 " People who know little are usually great talkers, while men who know much say little. "

― Jean-Jacques Rousseau

10 " 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

11 " 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

12 " So finally we tumble into the abyss, we ask God why he has made us so feeble. But, in spite of ourselves, He replies through our consciences: 'I have made you too feeble to climb out of the pit, because i made you strong enough not to fall in. "

― Jean-Jacques Rousseau , Confessions

13 " 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. "

― Jean-Jacques Rousseau , Discourse on the Origin of Inequality

14 " Teach your scholar to observe the phenomena of nature; you will soon rouse his curiosity, but if you would have it grow, do not be in too great a hurry to satisfy this curiosity. Put the problems before him and let him solve them himself. Let him know nothing because you have told him, but because he has learnt it for himself. Let him not be taught science, let him discover it. If ever you substitute authority for reason he will cease to reason; he will be a mere plaything of other people's thoughts. "

― Jean-Jacques Rousseau

15 " The bounds of human possibility are not as confining as we think they are; they are made to seem to be tight by our weaknesses, our vices, our prejudices that confine them. "

― Jean-Jacques Rousseau , The Social Contract

16 " I prefer liberty with danger than peace with slavery. "

― Jean-Jacques Rousseau

17 " 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

18 " 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

19 " An unbroken horse erects his mane, paws the ground and starts back impetuously at the sight of the bridle; while one which is properly trained suffers patiently even whip and spur: so savage man will not bend his neck to the yoke to which civilised man submits without a murmur, but prefers the most turbulent state of liberty to the most peaceful slavery. We cannot therefore, from the servility of nations already enslaved, judge of the natural disposition of mankind for or against slavery; we should go by the prodigious efforts of every free people to save itself from oppression. I know that the former are for ever holding forth in praise of the tranquillity they enjoy in their chains, and that they call a state of wretched servitude a state of peace: miserrimam servitutem pacem appellant. But when I observe the latter sacrificing pleasure, peace, wealth, power and life itself to the preservation of that one treasure, which is so disdained by those who have lost it; when I see free-born animals dash their brains out against the bars of their cage, from an innate impatience of captivity; when I behold numbers of naked savages, that despise European pleasures, braving hunger, fire, the sword and death, to preserve nothing but their independence, I feel that it is not for slaves to argue about liberty. "

― Jean-Jacques Rousseau

20 " I know that [civilized men] do nothing but boast incessantly of the peace and repose they enjoy in their chains.... But when I see [barbarous man] sacrifice pleasures, repose, wealth, power, and life itself for the preservation of this sole good which is so disdained by those who have lost it; when I see animals born free and despising captivity break their heads against the bars of their prison; when I see multitudes of entirely naked savages scorn European voluptuousness and endure hunger, fire, the sword, and death to preserve only their independence, I feel it does not behoove slaves to reason about freedom. "

― Jean-Jacques Rousseau , Discourse on the Origin of Inequality

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10