Jean-Jacques Rousseau Quotes

“Absolute silence leads to sadness. It is the image of death.”

“All my misfortunes come of having thought too well of my fellows.”

“All wickedness comes from weakness. The child is wicked only because he is weak. Make him strong; he will be good. He who could do everything would never do harm.”

“As soon as any man says of the affairs of the State "What does it matter to me?" the State may be given up for lost.”

“Blushes are the sign of guilt; true innocence is ashamed of nothing.”

“Cities are the abyss of the human species.”

“Civilization is a hopeless race to discover remedies for the evils it produces.”

“Conscience is the voice of the soul; the passions are the voice of the body.”

“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.”

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

“Finance is a slave's word.”

“Freedom is the power to choose our own chains.”

“Happiness: a good bank account, a good cook and a good digestion.”

“I am not made like any of those I have seen. I venture to believe that I am not made like any of those who are in existence. If I am not better, at least I am different.”

“I hate books; they only teach us to talk about things we know nothing about.”

“I prefer liberty with danger than peace with slavery.”

“I would rather be a man of paradoxes than a man of prejudices.”

“If there is in this world a well-attested account, it is that of vampires. Nothing is lacking: official reports, affidavits of well-known people, of surgeons, of priests, of magistrates; the judicial proof is most complete. And with all that, who is there who believes in vampires?”

“If there were a nation of Gods, it would govern itself democratically. A government so perfect is not suited to men.”

“If, by chance, someone among those men of extraordinary talent is found who has firmness of soul and who refuses to yield to the genius of his age and to debase himself with childish works, woe unto him! He will die in poverty and oblivion.”

“In a well governed state, there are few punishments, not because there are many pardons, but because criminals are rare; it is when a state is in decay that the multitude of crimes is a guarantee of impunity.”

“In the strict sense of the term, a true democracy has never existed, and never will exist. It is against natural order that the great number should govern and that the few should be governed.”

“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.”

“It is not possible for minds degraded by a host of trivial concerns to ever rise to anything great.”

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

“Laws are always useful to those with possessions and harmful to those who have nothing.”

“Love childhood, indulge its sports, its pleasures, its delightful instincts. Who has not sometimes regretted that age when laughter was ever on the lips, and when the heart was ever at peace?”

“Man is born free, but is everywhere in chains.”

“Money is the seed of money, and the first guinea is sometimes more difficult to acquire than the second million.”

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

“No one is happy unless he respects himself.”

“Once you teach people to say what they do not understand, it is easy enough to get them to say anything you like.”

“One may live tranquilly in a dungeon; but does life consist in living quietly?”

“Our passions are the chief means of self-preservation; to try to destroy them is therefore as absurd as it is useless; this would be to overcome nature, to reshape God's handiwork. If God bade man annihilate the passions he has given him, God would bid him be and not be; He would contradict himself. He has never given such a foolish commandment, there is nothing like it written on the heart of man, and what God will have a man do, He does not leave to the words of another man.
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“Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.”

“People in their natural state are basically good. But this natural innocence, however, is corrupted by the evils of society.”

“People who know little are usually great talkers, while men who know much say little. It is plain that 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.”

“Plants are shaped by cultivation and men by education... We are born weak, we need strength; we are born totally unprovided, we need aid; we are born stupid, we need judgment. Everything we do not have at our birth and which we need when we are grown is given us by education.”

“Rather suffer an injustice than commit one.”

“So long as chastity is preserved, it is respected; it is despised only after having been lost.”

“The "sociable" man, always outside himself, is capable of living only in the opinions of others and, so to speak, derives the sentiment of his own existence solely from their judgment.”

“The body politic, like the human body, begins to die from its birth, and bears in itself the causes of its destruction.”

“The first person who, having enclosed a plot of land, took it into his head to say this is mine and found people simple enough to believe him was the true founder of civil society. What crimes, wars, murders, what miseries and horrors would the human race have been spared, had some one pulled up the stakes or filled in the ditch and cried out to his fellow men: "Do not listen to this imposter. You are lost if you forget that the fruits of the earth belong to all and the earth to no one!”

“The freedom of mankind does not lie in the fact that can do what we want, but that we do not have to do that which we do not want.”

“The happiest is the person who suffers the least pain; the most miserable who enjoys the least pleasure.”

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

“The one thing we do not know is the limit of the knowable.”

“The taste for splendor is hardly ever combined in the same souls with the taste for the honorable.”

“The thirst after happiness is never extinguished in the heart of man.”

“The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless.”

“There are always four sides to a story: your side, their side, the truth and what really happened.”

“Thinkers are seldom gamblers; gambling interrupts the habit of thought and turns it towards barren combinations; thus one good result, perhaps the only good result of the taste for science, is that it deadens to some extent this vulgar passion; people will prefer to try to discover the uses of play rather than to devote themselves to it. I should argue with the gamblers against gambling, and I should find more delight in scoffing at their losses than in winning their money.”

“Those people who treat politics and morality separately will never understand either of them.”

“Those that are most slow in making a promise are the most faithful in the performance of it.”

“To be sane in a world of madman is in itself madness.”

“Trust your heart rather than your head.”

“We are reduced to asking others what we are. We never dare to ask ourselves.”

“We must powder our wigs; that is why so many poor people have no bread.”

“What good would it be to possess the whole universe if one were its only survivor?”

“What wisdom can you find that is greater than kindness?”

“When a man dies he clutches in his hands only that which he has given away during his lifetime.”

“Why should we build our happiness on the opinions of others, when we can find it in our own hearts?”