Jean-Jacques Rousseau Quotes

“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.”

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

“Cities are the abyss of the human species.”

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

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

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

“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?”

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

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

“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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“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.”

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

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

“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.”

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