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Jean-Jacques Rousseau quotes
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“People who know little are usually great talkers, while men who know much say little.”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
,
Emile, or On Education
“Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains.”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
,
The Social Contract
“What wisdom can you find that is greater than kindness?”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
,
Emile, or On Education
“The strongest is never strong enough to be always the master, unless he transforms strength into right, and obedience into duty.”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
,
The Social Contract
“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.”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
,
The Social Contract
“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.”
“laws are always of use to those who possess and harmful to those who have nothing”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
,
The Social Contract
“Liberty may be gained, but can never be recovered.”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
,
The Social Contract
“Once you teach people to say what they do not understand, it is easy enough to get them to say anything you like.”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
,
Emile, or On Education
“The body politic, as well as the human body, begins to die as soon as it is born, and carries in itself the causes of its destruction.”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
,
The Social Contract
“To renounce liberty is to renounce being a man, to surrender the rights of humanity and even its duties.”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
,
The Social Contract
“Let him not be taught science, let him discover it. If ever you substitute authority for reason he will cease to reason; he will be a mere plaything of other people's thoughts.”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
,
Emile, or On Education
“Men always love what is good or what they find good; it is in judging what is good that they go wrong.”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
,
The Social Contract
“One thinks himself the master of others, and still remains a greater slave than they.”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
,
The Social Contract
“In a word, it is the best and most natural arrangement that the wisest should govern the many, when it is assured that they will govern for its profit, and not for their own.”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
,
The Social Contract
“Every man has a right to risk his own life in order to preserve it.”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
,
The Social Contract
“The word finance is a slavish word, unknown in the city-state.”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
,
The Social Contract
“It is precisely because the force of circumstances tends continually to destroy equality that the force of legislation should always tend to its maintenance.”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
,
The Social Contract
“I hate books; they only teach us to talk about things we know nothing about.”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
,
Emile, or On Education
“The passage from the state of nature to the civil state produces a very remarkable change in man, by substituting justice for instinct in his conduct, and giving his actions the morality they had formerly lacked.”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
,
The Social Contract
“Every one desires happiness, but to secure it he must know what happiness is.”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
,
Emile, or On Education
“A child who passes through many hands in turn, can never be well brought up.”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
,
Emile, or On Education
“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.”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
,
Emile, or On Education
“To decide that the son of a slave is born a slave is to decide that he is not born a man.”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
,
The Social Contract
“freedom, not power, is the greatest good. That man is truly free who desires what he is able to perform, and does what he desires.”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
,
Emile, or On Education
“The death-penalty inflicted upon criminals may be looked on in much the same light: it is in order that we may not fall victims to an assassin that we consent to die if we ourselves turn assassins.”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
,
The Social Contract
“We say Love is blind because his eyes are better than ours, and he perceives relations which we cannot discern.”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
,
Emile, or On Education
“Civilised man is born and dies a slave. The infant is bound up in swaddling clothes, the corpse is nailed down in his coffin. All his life long man is imprisoned by our institutions.”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
,
Emile, or On Education
“The whole difference is that, in the family, the love of the father for his children repays him for the care he takes of them, while, in the State, the pleasure of commanding takes the place of the love which the chief cannot have for the peoples...”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
,
The Social Contract
“Were there a people of gods, their government would be democratic. So perfect a government is not for men.”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
,
The Social Contract
“It is solely on the basis of this common interest that every society should be governed.”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
,
The Social Contract
“If the Sovereign desires to govern, or the magistrate to give laws, or if the subjects refuse to obey, disorder takes the place of regularity, force and will no longer act together, and the State is dissolved and falls into despotism or anarchy.”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
,
The Social Contract
“rich or poor, weak or strong, every idler is a thief.”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
,
Emile, or On Education
“A feeble body makes a feeble mind.”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
,
Emile, or On Education
“All that destroys social unity is worthless; all institutions that set man in contradiction to himself are worthless.”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
,
The Social Contract
“Provided a man is not mad, he can be cured of any folly but vanity; there is no cure for this but experience, if indeed there is any cure for it at all”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
,
Emile, or On Education
“Society must be studied in the individual and the individual in society; those who desire to treat politics and morals apart from one another will never understand either.”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
,
Emile, or On Education
“Children sometimes flatter old men; they never love them.”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
,
Emile, or On Education
“There will always be a great difference between subduing a multitude and ruling a society.”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
,
The Social Contract
“The great soul of the legislator is the only miracle that can prove his mission.”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
,
The Social Contract
“There are two kinds of dependence: dependence on things, which is the work of nature; and dependence on men, which is the work of society.”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
,
Emile, or On Education
“Machiavelli . . . He professed to teach kings; but it was the people he really taught.”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
,
The Social Contract
“censorship may be useful for the preservation of morality, but can never be so for its restoration.”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
,
The Social Contract
“He who judges of morality judges of honour; and he who judges of honour finds his law in opinion.”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
,
The Social Contract
“supreme joy is a hundredfold greater in anticipation than in possession; its savour is greater while we wait for it than when it is ours.”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
,
Emile, or On Education
“to control the child one must often control oneself.”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
,
Emile, or On Education
“Form no judgments and you will never be mistaken.”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
,
Emile, or On Education
“In solitude especially is it, that the advantage of living with a person who knows how to think is particularly felt.”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
,
Confessions
“agriculture is the earliest, the most honest of trades, and more useful than all the rest, and therefore more honourable for those who practise it.”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
,
Emile, or On Education
“Hatred, as well as love, renders its votaries credulous.”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
,
Confessions
view all 55 quotes
Related topics
ignorance
education
freedom
society
teaching
government
oppression
slavery
state
love
morality
nature
justice
force
talking
wisdom
strength
democracy
crime
humanity
Related sources
The Social Contract
(28)
Emile, or On Education
(25)
Confessions
(2)
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