Jean Jacques Rousseau Quotes

“What wisdom can you find greater than kindness.”

“People who know little are usually great talkers, while men who know much say little.”

“To be sane in a world of madman is in itself madness.”

“Everything is good as it comes from the hands of the Maker of the world, but degenerates once it gets into the hands of man”

“Civilization is a hopeless race to discover remedies for the evils it produces.”

“I propose to show my fellows a man as nature made him, and this man shall be myself.”

Jean Jacques Rousseau Quotes about nature

“If we assume man has been corrupted by an artificial civilization, what is the natural state? the state of nature from which he has been removed? imagine, wandering up and down the forest without industry, without speech, and without home.”

Source: Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1765-1770; published 1782), Book I, I
Context: I have entered on an enterprise which is without precedent, and will have no imitator. I propose to show my fellows a man as nature made him, and this man shall be myself.

“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..”

“There as here, passions are the motive of all action, but they are livelier, more ardent, or merely simpler and purer, thereby assuming a totally different character. All the first movements of nature are good and right.”

“Two conflicting types of educational systems spring from these conflicting aims. One is public and common to many, the other private and domestic. If you wish to know what is meant by public education, read Plato's Republic. Those who merely judge books by their titles take this for a treatise on politics, but it is the finest treatise on education ever written. In popular estimation the Platonic Institute stands for all that is fanciful and unreal. For my own part I should have thought the system of Lycurgus far more impracticable had he merely committed it to writing. Plato only sought to purge man's heart; Lycurgus turned it from its natural course. The public institute does not and cannot exist, for there is neither country nor patriot. The very words should be struck out of our language. The reason does not concern us at present, so that though I know it I refrain from stating it.”

First Dialogue; translated by Judith R. Bush, Christopher Kelly, Roger D. Masters
Dialogues: Rousseau Judge of Jean-Jacques (published 1782)

“Much more naturally than you do: because flight is a much more natural consequence of fear than of hate. He doesn't flee men because he hates them, but because he is afraid of them. He doesn't flee them in order to harm them, but to try o escape the harm they wish to do to him. They, on the contrary, don't seek him through friendship, but through hate. They seek him and he flees from them just as in the wilderness of Africa, where there are few men and many tigers, the men flee the tigers, the men flee the tigers, and the tigers seek the men.”

Emile, or On Education (1762), Book I

“Trust your heart rather than your head.”

Second Dialogue; translated by Judith R. Bush, Christopher Kelly, Roger D. Masters
Dialogues: Rousseau Judge of Jean-Jacques (published 1782)

Jean Jacques Rousseau Quotes about heart

“Why should we build our happiness on the opinons of others, when we can find it in our own hearts?”

“It is as if my heart and my brain did not belong to the same person. Feelings come quicker than lightning and fill my soul, but they bring me no illumination; they burn me and dazzle me.”

Source: The Social Contract and Discourses

Jean Jacques Rousseau book Confessions

Source: Confessions

“I want you to read the true system of the heart, drafted by a decent man and published under another name. I do not want you to be biased against good and useful books merely because a man unworthy of reading them has the audacity to call himself the Author.”

“He neither seeks nor avoids talking about his enemies. When he does speak of them, it is with pride without disdain, humor without rancor, reproach without bitterness, frankness without spite. And in the same way, he speaks of his rivals for glory only with deserved praises that conceal no hidden venom, which can certainly not be said of the praise they sometimes give him. But what I find in him that is most rare in an Author and and even in a sensitive man is the most perfect tolerance in matters of feelings and opinions, and the putting aside of all partisan spirit, even in his own favor; wanting freely to state his opinion and his reasons when the issue demands it, and even doing so with passion when his heart is agitated; but not blaming people for not adopting what he feels any more than he puts up with anyone's wish to deprive him of his feeling; and giving everyone the same freedom of thought as he insists on having for himself. I hear everyone talk about tolerance, but he is the only truly tolerant person I have known.”

First Dialogue; translated by Judith R. Bush, Christopher Kelly, Roger D. Masters
Dialogues: Rousseau Judge of Jean-Jacques (published 1782)

“Let's not be dazzled by the sententious glitter with which error and lying often cover themselves. Society is not created by the crowd, and bodies come together in vain when hearts reject each other. The truly sociable man is more difficult in his relationships than others; those which consist only in false appearances cannot suit him. He prefers to live far from wicked men without thinking about them, than to see them and hate them. He prefers to flee his enemy rather than seek him out to harm him. A person who knows no other society than that of the heart will not seek his society in your circles. That is How J. J. must have thought and behaved before the conspiracy of which he is the object.”

Second Dialogue; translated by Judith R. Bush, Christopher Kelly, Roger D. Masters
Dialogues: Rousseau Judge of Jean-Jacques (published 1782)

“There is only one man who gets his own way—he who can get it single-handed; therefore 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. This is my fundamental maxim. Apply it to childhood, and all the rules of education spring from it. Society has enfeebled man, not merely by robbing him of the right to his own strength, but still more by making his strength insufficient for his needs. This is why his desires increase in proportion to his weakness; and this is why the child is weaker than the man. If a man is strong and a child is weak it is not because the strength of the one is absolutely greater than the strength of the other, but because the one can naturally provide for himself and the other cannot. Thus the man will have more desires and the child more caprices, a word which means, I take it, desires which are not true needs, desires which can only be satisfied with the help of others.”

Second Dialogue; translated by Judith R. Bush, Christopher Kelly, Roger D. Masters
Dialogues: Rousseau Judge of Jean-Jacques (published 1782)

Jean Jacques Rousseau: Trending quotes

“Hatred, as well as love, renders its votaries credulous.”

Emile, or On Education (1762), Book II

Source: Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1765-1770; published 1782), Books II-VI, V

“i am do big fard”

“Whenever the last trumpet shall sound, I will present myself before the sovereign judge with this book in my hand, and loudly proclaim, thus have I acted; these were my thoughts; such was I.”

Jean Jacques Rousseau Quotes

“The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless.”

Variant translation: 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.
Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1765-1770; published 1782), Book I
Context: Whenever the last trumpet shall sound, I will present myself before the sovereign judge with this book in my hand, and loudly proclaim, thus have I acted; these were my thoughts; such was I. With equal freedom and veracity have I related what was laudable or wicked, I have concealed no crimes, added no virtues; and if I have sometimes introduced superfluous ornament, it was merely to occupy a void occasioned by defect of memory: I may have supposed that certain, which I only knew to be probable, but have never asserted as truth, a conscious falsehood. Such as I was, I have declared myself; sometimes vile and despicable, at others, virtuous, generous and sublime; even as thou hast read my inmost soul: Power eternal! assemble round thy throne an innumerable throng of my fellow-mortals, let them listen to my confessions, let them blush at my depravity, let them tremble at my sufferings; let each in his turn expose with equal sincerity the failings, the wanderings of his heart, and, if he dare, aver, I was better than that man.

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

“To write a good love letter, you ought to begin without knowing what you mean to say, and to finish without knowing what you have written.”

Source: Emile or On Education

“All my misfortunes come of having thought too well of my fellows.”

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

“The money that we possess is the instrument of liberty”

Source: The Social Contract

“Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.”

Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1765-1770; published 1782), Book I
Context: I love liberty, and I loathe constraint, dependence, and all their kindred annoyances. As long as my purse contains money it secures my independence, and exempts me from the trouble of seeking other money, a trouble of which I have always had a perfect horror; and the dread of seeing the end of my independence, makes me proportionately unwilling to part with my money. The money that we possess is the instrument of liberty, that which we lack and strive to obtain is the instrument of slavery.

“I am not made like any of those I have seen. I venture to believe that I am not made like any of those who are in existence. If I am not better, at least I am different.”

“It is too difficult to think nobly when one thinks only of earning a living.”

Jean Jacques Rousseau book Confessions

Variant translation: It is too difficult to think nobly when one only thinks to get a living.
Source: Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1765-1770; published 1782), Books II-VI, II
Source: Confessions

“Or, rather, let us be more simple and less vain.”

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

“Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains. Those who think themselves the masters of others are indeed greater slaves than they.”

“I perceive God everywhere in His works. I sense Him in me; I see Him all around me.”

“… in respect of riches, no citizen shall ever be wealthy enough to buy another, and none poor enough to be forced to sell himself.”

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

Source: The Social Contract

“In truth, laws are always useful to those with possessions and harmful to those who have nothing; from which it follows that the social state is advantageous to men only when all possess something and none has too much.”

“The truth brings no man a fortune.”

Source: The Social Contract

“There are times when I am so unlike myself that I might be taken for someone else of an entirely opposite character.”

Jean Jacques Rousseau book Confessions

Source: Confessions

“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.”

“There is nothing better than the encouragement of a good friend.”

Source: The Social Contract

“We must powder our wigs; that is why so many poor people have no bread.”

“She was dull, unattractive, couldn't tell the time, count money or tie her own shoe laces… But I loved her”

“The only moral lesson which is suited for a child--the most important lesson for every time of life--is this: 'Never hurt anybody.”

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

Source: Emile or On Education

“Every person has a right to risk their own life for the preservation of it.”

Source: The Social Contract

“Every man having been born free and master of himself, no one else may under any pretext whatever subject him without his consent. To assert that the son of a slave is born a slave is to assert that he is not born a man.”

“I have never thought, for my part, that man's freedom consists in his being able to do whatever he wills, but that he should not, by any human power, be forced to do what is against his will.”

Source: The Social Contract

“Love, known to the person by whom it is inspired, becomes more bearable.”

Source: Reveries of the Solitary Walker

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

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

“A born king is a very rare being.”

Source: Emile or On Education

“It is easier to conquer than to administer. With enough leverage, a finger could overturn the world; but to support the world, one must have the shoulders of Hercules.”

Source: The Social Contract

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

Source: 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.”

“If there were a nation of Gods, it would govern itself democratically. A government so perfect is not suited to men.”

Source: The Social Contract

“Let's go dance under the elms:
Step lively, young lassies.
Let's go dance under the elms:
Gallants, take up your pipes.”

Source: The Social Contract

Jean Jacques Rousseau Le devin du village

Le devin du village (1752)

“As a general rule—never substitute the symbol for the thing signified, unless it is impossible to show the thing itself; for the child's attention is so taken up with the symbol that he will forget what it signifies.”

“An honest man nearly always thinks justly.”

Emile, or On Education (1762), Book III

“He thinks like a philosopher, but governs like a king.”

As quoted in A Dictionary of Thoughts: Being a Cyclopedia of Laconic Quotations from the Best Authors of the World, Both Ancient and Modern (1908) by Tryon Edwards, p. 277.

“Beings who are so uniquely constituted must necessarily express themselves in other ways than ordinary men. It is impossible that with souls so differently modified, they should not carry over into the expression of their feelings and ideas the stamp of those modifications.”

Of Frederick the Great
Source: Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1765-1770; published 1782), Books VIII-XII, XII

“What I had to say was so clear and I felt it so deeply that I am amazed by the tediousness, repetitiousness, verbiage, and disorder of this writing. What would have mad it lively and vehement coming from another's pen is precisely hat has made it dull and slack coming from mine. The subject was myself, and I no longer found on my own interest that zeal and vigor of courage which can exalt a generous soul only for another person's cause.”

First Dialogue; translated by Judith R. Bush, Christopher Kelly, Roger D. Masters
Dialogues: Rousseau Judge of Jean-Jacques (published 1782)

“Visions are a feeble resource, you will say, against great adversity! Oh Sir, these visions may possibly have more reality than all those apparent goods about which men make so much ado, for they never bring a true feeling of happiness to the soul, and those who possess them are equally forced to project themselves into the future for want of finding enjoyments that satisfy them, in the present.”

On the Subject and Form of This Writing; translated by Judith R. Bush, Christopher Kelly, Roger D. Masters
Dialogues: Rousseau Judge of Jean-Jacques (published 1782)

“Virtue is a state of war, and to live in it means one always has some battle to wage against oneself.”

Dialogues: Rousseau Judge of Jean-Jacques (published 1782)
Source: Second Dialogue; translated by Judith R. Bush, Christopher Kelly, Roger D. Masters

“Through the fortunate effect of my frankness, I had the rarest and surest opportunity to know a man well, which is to study him at leisure in his private life and living, so to speak, with himself. For he share himself without reservation and made me feel as much at home in his house as in mine. I had almost no other abode than his own.”

Chère amie, ne savez-vous pas que la vertu est un état de guerre, et que, pour y vivre, on a toujours quelque combat à rendre contre soi? <br class="br"> Julie ou la Nouvelle Héloïse http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Julie_ou_la_Nouvelle_H%C3%A9lo%C3%AFse/Sixi%C3%A8me_partie#Lettre_VII._R.C3.A9ponse (French), Sixième partie, Lettre VII Réponse (1761) <br class="br"> Julie, or The New Heloise http://books.google.com/books?id=oN6_B_AFhcwC (English), Part Six, Letter VII Response, pg 560

“Complete ignorance with regard to certain matters is perhaps the best thing for children; but let them learn very early what it is impossible to conceal from them permanently. Either their curiosity must never be aroused, or it must be satisfied before the age when it becomes a source of danger. Your conduct towards your pupil in this respect depends greatly on his individual circumstances, the society in which he moves, the position in which he may find himself, etc. Nothing must be left to chance; and if you are not sure of keeping him in ignorance of the difference between the sexes till he is sixteen, take care you teach him before he is ten.”

Second Dialogue; translated by Judith R. Bush, Christopher Kelly, Roger D. Masters
Dialogues: Rousseau Judge of Jean-Jacques (published 1782)

“It is a mistake to classify the passions as lawful and unlawful, so as to yield to the one and refuse the other. All alike are good if we are their masters; all alike are bad if we abandon ourselves to them. Nature forbids us to extend our relations beyond the limits of our strength; reason forbids us to want what we cannot get, conscience forbids us, not to be tempted, but to yield to temptation. To feel or not to feel a passion is beyond our control, but we can control ourselves. Every sentiment under our own control is lawful; those which control us are criminal. A man is not guilty if he loves his neighbour's wife, provided he keeps this unhappy passion under the control of the law of duty; he is guilty if he loves his own wife so greatly as to sacrifice everything to that love.”

Emile, or On Education (1762), Book IV

“Days of absence, sad and dreary,
Clothed in sorrow's dark array,—
Days of absence, I am weary:
She I love is far away.”

Emile, or On Education (1762), Book V

“I remembered the way out suggested by a great princess when told that the peasants had no bread: "Well, let them eat cake."”

Day of Absence, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

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

This passage contains a statement Qu'ils mangent de la brioche that has usually come to be attributed to Marie Antoinette; this was written in 1766, when Marie Antoinette was 10 and still 4 years away from her marriage to Louis XVI of France, and is an account of events of 1740, before she was born. It also implies the phrase had been long known before that time.
Variant: At length I recollected the thoughtless saying of a great princess, who, on being informed that the country people had no bread, replied, "Then let them eat cake!"
Source: Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1765-1770; published 1782), Books II-VI, VI