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Jean-Jacques Rousseau QUOTES

141 " L’ambition des principaux profita de ces circonstances pour perpétuer leurs charges dans leurs familles ; le peuple, déjà accoutumé à la dépendance, au repos, et aux commodités de la vie, et déjà hors d’état de briser ses fers, consentit à laisser augmenter sa servitude pour affermir sa tranquillité : et c’est ainsi que les chefs, devenus héréditaires, s’accoutumèrent à regarder leur magistrature comme un bien de famille, à se regarder eux-mêmes comme les propriétaires de l’état, dont ils n’étaient d’abord que les officiers ; à appeler leurs concitoyens leurs esclaves, à les compter, comme du bétail, au nombre des choses qui leur appartenaient ; et à s’appeler eux-mêmes égaux aux dieux, et rois des rois. "

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

142 " But unity divides. Unity excludes. Unity polarizes. The corollary of the nation’s unity is the elimination of any individuals or groups that disrupt that unity. People who do not concur with the nation’s interests and goals, who persist in voicing their own private interests, who threaten the nation’s unanimity are considered enemies to be banished or punished. Thus, the Rousseauian yearning for cohesion, solidarity, and oneness imposes the psychology of the purge. "

― Jean-Jacques Rousseau

143 " Every particular society, when it is narrow and unified, is estranged from the all-encompassing society. Every patriot is harsh to foreigners. They arc only men. They arc nothing in his eyes - This is a drawback, inevitable but not compelling. The essential thing is to be good to the people with whom one lives. Abroad, the Spartan was ambitious, avaricious. iniquitous. But disinterestedness, equity, and concord reigned within his walls. Distrust those cosmopolitans who go to great length in their books to discover duties they do not deign to fulfill around them. A philosopher loves the Tartars so as to be spared having to love his neighbors. "

― Jean-Jacques Rousseau , Emile, or On Education

144 " I have entered upon a performance which is without example, whose
accomplishment will have no imitator. I mean to present my
fellow-mortals with a man in all the integrity of nature; and this man
shall be myself.

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.

Whenever the last trumpet shall sound, I will present myself before the
sovereign judge with this book in my hand, and loudly proclaim, thus have
I acted; these were my thoughts; such was I. With equal freedom and
veracity have I related what was laudable or wicked, I have concealed no
crimes, added no virtues; and if I have sometimes introduced superfluous
ornament, it was merely to occupy a void occasioned by defect of memory:
I may have supposed that certain, which I only knew to be probable, but
have never asserted as truth, a conscious falsehood. Such as I was, I
have declared myself; sometimes vile and despicable, at others, virtuous,
generous and sublime; even as thou hast read my inmost soul: Power
eternal! assemble round thy throne an innumerable throng of my
fellow-mortals, let them listen to my confessions, let them blush at my
depravity, let them tremble at my sufferings; let each in his turn expose
with equal sincerity the failings, the wanderings of his heart, and, if
he dare, aver, I was better than that man. "

― Jean-Jacques Rousseau

145 " The ever-recurring law of necessity soon teaches a man to do what he does not like, so as to avert evils which he would dislike still more... this foresight, well or ill used, is the source of all the wisdom or the wretchedness of mankind. "

― Jean-Jacques Rousseau , Emile, or On Education

146 " People who know little are usually great talkers, while men who know much say little. It is plain than an ignorant person thinks everything he does know important, and he tells it to everybody. But a well-educated man is not so ready to display his learning; he would have too much to say, and he sees that there is much more to be said, so he holds his peace. "

― Jean-Jacques Rousseau

147 " Nothing is less in our power than the heart, and far from commanding we are forced to obey it. "

― Jean-Jacques Rousseau

148 " Born as I was the citizen of a free state and a member of its sovereign body, the very right to vote imposes on me the duty to instruct myself in public affairs, however little influence my voice may have in them. "

― Jean-Jacques Rousseau , The Social Contract

149 " I feel an indescribable ecstasy and delirium in melting, as it were, into the system of being, in identifying myself with the whole of nature.. "

― Jean-Jacques Rousseau

150 " Russia will never be really civilized, because it was civilized too soon. Peter has a genius for imitation; but he lacked true genius, which is creative and makes all from nothing. ... His first wish was to make Germans or Englishmen, when he ought to have been making Russians; and he prevented his subjects from ever becoming what they might have been by persuading them that they were what they are not. "

― Jean-Jacques Rousseau , The Social Contract

Jean-Jacques Rousseau QUOTES

151 " La liberté n'est dans aucune forme de gouvernement, elle est dans le coeur de l'homme libre ; il la porte partout avec lui. L'homme vil porte partout la servitude. L'un serait esclave à Genève, et l'autre libre à Paris. "

― Jean-Jacques Rousseau , Emile, or On Education

152 " Les peuples une fois accoutumés à des maîtres ne sont plus en état de s'en passer. S'ils tentent de secouer le joug, ils s'éloignent d'autant plus de la liberté, que, prenant pour elle une licence effrénée qui lui est opposée, leurs révolutions les livrent presque toujours à des séducteurs qui ne font qu'aggraver leurs chaînes. "

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

153 " Above all he is jealous of his own self-respect; this is his most valued possession and it would be a real loss to him were he to acquire the respect of others at the expense of his own. "

― Jean-Jacques Rousseau , Reveries of the Solitary Walker

154 " C’est ainsi qu’il dut venir un temps où les yeux du peuple furent fascinés à tel point que ses conducteurs n’avaient qu’à dire au plus petit des hommes, Sois grand, toi et toute ta race, aussitôt il paraissait grand à tout le monde ainsi qu’à ses propres yeux, et ses descendants s’élevaient encore à mesure qu’ils s’éloignaient de lui ; plus la cause était reculée et incertaine, plus l’effet augmentait ; plus on pouvait compter de fainéants dans une famille, et plus elle devenait illustre. "

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

155 " Tutto è bene quando esce dalle mani dell'Autore delle cose, tutto degenera fra le mani dell'uomo. "

― Jean-Jacques Rousseau

156 " On the other hand, nothing would have been so miserable as savage man, dazzled by enlightenment, tormented by passions, and reasoning about a state different from his own. "

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

157 " In instinct alone, man had everything he needed in order to live in the state of nature; in a cultivated reason, he has only what he needs to live in society. "

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

158 " So here I am, all alone on this earth, with no brother, neighbour, or friend, and no company but my own. The most sociable and loving of human beings has by common consent been banished by the rest of society. In the refinement of their hatred they have continued to seek the cruellest forms of torture for my sensitive soul, and they have brutally severed all the ties which bound me to them. I would have loved my fellow men in spite of themselves. Only by ceasing to be men have they succeeded in losing my affection for them. So now they are strangers, persons unknown who mean nothing to me since that is what they wanted. But what about me, cut off from them and from everything else, what am I? This is what remains for me to find out now. "

― Jean-Jacques Rousseau

159 " What do I have to fear from them now that everything is over? Since they can no longer make things any worse for me, they can no longer frighten me. Anxiety and terror are ills from which they have delivered me for ever: this is real relief for me. Real ills have little hold over me; I deal easily with those that I actually experience, but not with those that I fear. My fevered imagination adds them together, turns them over and over, draws them out and increases them. The expectation of them tortures me a hundred times more than their actual presence, and the threat of them is far worse than the blow itself. As soon as they happen, the experience of them strips them of their imagined aura and cuts them down to their true size. "

― Jean-Jacques Rousseau

160 " Il me semble que sous les ombrages d'une forêt je suis oublié, libre et paisible comme si je n'avais plus d'ennemis. "

― Jean-Jacques Rousseau , Les rêveries du promeneur solitaire suivi de Mon portrait : lettres à Malesherbes