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.”

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

“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 prefer liberty with danger than peace with slavery.”

“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?”

“No one is happy unless he respects himself.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“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 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 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.”

“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 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?”

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

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

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

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

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