Best Jean-Jacques Rousseau Quotes

Great men never make bad use of their superiority. They see it and feel it and are not less modest. The more they have, the more they know their own deficiencies.

Man is born free, yet he is everywhere in chains.

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

Endurance and to be able to endure is the first lesson a child should learn because it's the one they will most need to know.

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

Adversity is a great teacher, but this teacher makes us pay dearly for its instruction; and often the profit we derive, is not worth the price we paid.

A man says what he knows, a woman says what will please.

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

Whoever blushes confesses guilt, true innocence never feels shame.

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

Heroes are not known by the loftiness of their carriage; the greatest braggarts are generally the merest cowards.

How many famous and high-spirited heroes have lived a day too long?

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

The person who is slowest in making a promise is most faithful in its performance.

Do not judge, and you will never be mistaken.

Good laws lead to the making of better ones; bad ones bring about worse.

Every man has the right to risk his own life in order to save it.

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

Our will is always for our own good, but we do not always see what that is.

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

Temperance and labor are the two real physicians of man.

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.

The English people believes itself to be free; it is gravely mistaken; it is free only during election of members of parliament; as soon as the members are elected, the people is enslaved; it is nothing. In the brief moment of its freedom, the English people makes such a use of that freedom that it deserves to lose it.

I have always said and felt that true enjoyment can not be described.

Base souls have no faith in great individuals.

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

We do not know what is really good or bad fortune.

The English think they are free. They are free only during the election of members of parliament.

Free people, remember this maxim: We may acquire liberty, but it is never recovered if it is once lost.

A country cannot subsist well without liberty, nor liberty without virtue.

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

The body politic, as well as the human body, begins to die as soon as it is born, and carries itself the causes of its destruction.

Plant and your spouse plants with you; weed and you weed alone.

Reading, solitude, idleness, a soft and sedentary life, intercourse with women and young people, these are perilous paths for a young man, and these lead him constantly into danger.

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

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

I may not be better than other people, but at least I'm different.

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

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

What wisdom can you find that is greater than kindness?

We are born, so to speak, twice over; born into existence, and born into life; born a human being, and born a man.

Yes, if the life and death of Socrates are those of a wise man, the life and death of Jesus are those of a god.

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

Let the trumpet of the day of judgment sound when it will, I shall appear with this book in my hand before the Sovereign Judge, and cry with a loud voice, This is my work, there were my thoughts, and thus was I. I have freely told both the good and the bad, have hid nothing wicked, added nothing good.

It is not the criminal things that are hardest to confess, but the ridiculous and the shameful.