Jean-Jacques Rousseau Quotes

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

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

All of my misfortunes come from having thought too well of my fellows.

I hate books, for they only teach people to talk about what they don't understand.

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.

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 gaurantee of impunity.

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

Falsehood has an infinity of combinations, but truth has only one mode of being.

We are born weak, we need strength; helpless, we need aid; foolish, we need reason. All that we lack at birth, all that we need when we come to man's estate, is the gift of education.

To renounce liberty is to renounce being a man, to surrender the rights of humanity and even its duties.

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..

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

There is no evildoer who could not be made good for something.

However great a man's natural talent may be, the act of writing cannot be learned all at once.

Virtue is a state of war, and to live in it we have always to combat with ourselves.

You forget that the fruits belong to all and that the land belongs to no one.

Gratitude is a duty which ought to be paid, but which none have a right to expect.

Whoever blushes is already guilty; true innocence is ashamed of nothing.

The training of children is a profession, where we must know how to waste time in order to save it.

The strongest is never strong enough to be always the master, unless he transforms strength into right, and obedience into duty.

Our affections as well as our bodies are in perpetual flux.

To endure is the first thing that a child ought to learn, and that which he will have the most need to know.

To live is not breathing it is action.

Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.

The person who has lived the most is not the one with the most years but the one with the richest experiences.

Every man has the right to risk his own life in order to preserve it. Has it ever been said that a man who throws himself out the window to escape from a fire is guilty of suicide?

As long as there are rich people in the world, they will be desirous of distinguishing themselves from the poor.

At sixteen, the adolescent knows about suffering because he himself has suffered, but he barely knows that other beings also suffer.

Liberty is obedience to the law which one has laid down for oneself

Fame is but the breath of people, and that often unwholesome.

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

Watch a cat when it enters a room for the first time. It searches and smells about, it is not quiet for a moment, it trusts nothing until it has examined and made acquaintance with everything.

All that time is lost which might be better employed.

An honest man nearly always thinks justly.

Insults are the arguments employed by those who are in the wrong.

He who is most slow in making a promise is the most faithful in performance of it.

A feeble body weakens the mind.

Childhood is the sleep of reason.

With children use force; with men reason; such is the natural order of things. The wise man requires no law.