Jean-Jacques Rousseau Quotes

On this page you can find the TOP of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's best quotes! We hope you will find some sayings from Philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau's in our collection, which will inspire you to new achievements! There are currently 388 quotes on this page collected since June 28, 1712! Share our collection of quotes with your friends on social media so that they can find something to inspire them!
  • No true believer could be intolerant or a persecutor. If I were a magistrate and the law carried the death penalty against atheists, I would begin by sending to the stake whoever denounced another.

  • To try to conceal our own heart is a bad means to read that of others.

  • Trust your heart rather than your head.

  • If there wasn't a God we would have to invent one to keep people sane.

  • To make a man richer, give him more money of curb his desires.

    Men  
  • For it is in our nature to endure patiently the decrees of fate, but not the ill-will of others.

    Jean Jacques Rousseau (2013). “Emile or Concerning Education”, p.40, Simon and Schuster
  • Everything degenerates in the hands of man.

    Men  
    Emile bk. 1 (1762)
  • I may not amount to much, but at least I am unique.

  • All through life a man has need of a counsellor and guide.

    Men  
    Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1956). “Emile: selections”
  • It is to law alone that men owe justice and liberty. It is this salutary organ, of the will of all which establishes in civil rights the natural equality between men. It is this celestial voice which dictates to each citizen the precepts of public reason, and teaches him to act according to the rules of his own judgment and not to behave inconsistently with himself. It is with this voice alone that political leaders should speak when. they command.

    Men  
    Jean Jacques Rousseau (2015). “The Social Contract”, p.578, Jean Jacques Rousseau
  • If Socrates died like a philosopher, Jesus Christ died like a God.

  • A citizen should render to the state all the services he can as soon as the sovereign demands them.

    Jean-Jacques Rousseau (2010). “The Basic Political Writings (Second Edition)”, p.174, Hackett Publishing
  • Jewish authors would never have invented either that style nor that morality; and the Gospel has marks of truth so great, so striking, so utterly inimitable, that the invention of it would be more astonishing than the hero.

  • The man who gets the most out of life is not the one who has lived it longest, but the one who has felt life most deeply.

    Men  
    Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1956). “Emile: selections”
  • War is then not a relationship between one man and another, but a relationship between one State and another, in which individuals are enemies only by accident, not as men, nor even as citizens, but as soldiers; not as members of the fatherland, but as its defenders. Finally, any State can only have other States, and not men, as enemies, inasmuch as it is impossible to fix a true relation between things of different natures.

    War   Men  
  • Nature wants children to be children before men... Childhood has its own seeing, thinking and feeling.

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

  • Equality is deemed by many a mere speculative chimera, which can never be reduced to practice. But if the abuse is inevitable, does it follow that we ought not to try at least to mitigate it? It is precisely because the force of things tends always to destroy equality that the force of the legislature must always tend to maintain it.

    Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1791). “An Inquiry into the Nature of the Social Contract; or principles of political right. Translated from the French”, p.147
  • 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.

  • Everything made by man may be destroyed by man; there are no ineffaceable characters except those engraved by nature; and nature makes neither princes nor rich men nor great lords.

    Men  
  • To be sane in a world of madman is in itself madness.

  • We can never put ourselves in the shoes of children; we cannot fathom their thoughts, we lend them ours; and always following ourown reasoning, we stuff their heads with extravagance and error.

  • It is unnatural for a majority to rule, for a majority can seldom be organized and united for specific action, and a minority can.

  • Teach your scholar to observe the phenomena of nature; you will soon rouse his curiosity, but if you would have it grow, do not be in too great a hurry to satisfy this curiosity. Put the problems before him and let him solve them himself. Let him know nothing because you have told him, but because he has learnt it for himself. 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.

  • Do not base your life on the judgments of others; first, because they are as likely to be mistaken as you are, and further, because you cannot know that they are telling you their true thoughts.

  • Taste is, so to speak, the microscope of the judgment.

  • 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.

    Men  
    Du Contrat Social bk. 3, ch. 15 (1762)
  • If there were a nation of Gods, it would govern itself democratically. A government so perfect is not suited to men.

    Men  
  • He who has the base necessities of life should pay nothing; taxation on him who has a surplus may, if need be; extend to everything beyond necessities.

  • The abuse of books kills science. Believing that we know what we have read, we believe that we can dispense with learning it.

    Believe  
    Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1979). “Emile: Or, On Education”, p.450, Basic Books
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  • We hope you have found the saying you were looking for in our collection! At the moment, we have collected 388 quotes from the Philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, starting from June 28, 1712! We periodically replenish our collection so that visitors of our website can always find inspirational quotes by authors from all over the world! Come back to us again!