Jean-Jacques Rousseau cytaty strona 2

„Wszystko jest dobre, gdy wychodzi z rąk twórcy {rzeczy}; wszystko wyrodnieje w rękach człowieka.”

„Społeczeństwo obywatelskie jest stanem wzajemnej współzależności wszystkich ludzi, ludzie wszakże są źli, a większość z nich jest zmuszona zrezygnować z własnej woli i pracować na rzecz zaspokojenia potrzeb nielicznych. Ponieważ zaś to ci nieliczni ustalają prawa, większość ludzi nie ma nawet zapewnionej ochrony, dla której rzekomo dołączyli się do społeczeństwa. (…) To właśnie w społeczeństwie człowiek zaczyna pożądać pieniędzy i zaszczytów. (…) W pogoni za zaspokojeniem próżności natrafia na niekończącą się ilość okazji do sporu. (…) Naturalna namiętność współczucia zostaje wygaszona, a jedynym jej substytutem w nowych warunkach staje się moralność określająca ludzkie obowiązki i wspierana autorytetem władzy. Natura przestaje wystarczać. Przerażający stan wojny czyni ten krok koniecznym i gwarantuje zgodę biednych. (…) nierówność nabiera mocy prawnej – publiczna władza podporządkowuje sobie biednych dzięki przemocy.”

„Człowiek, który się zastanawia, jest zwierzęciem wynaturzonym.”

Źródło: Ekonomia polityczna (Économie politique), 1755, tłum. P. Nowak.

„Tylko miłość potrafi zatrzymać czas.”

„Zgryzoty wzajemnie sobie czynione, zawsze spadają w małżeństwie na tego, kto je wywołał.”

„Ani z miłości, ani ze związku małżeńskiego bynajmniej nie wypływa potrzeba nieustannej łączności obu płci. Mąż i żona powinni bezwzględnie żyć razem, lecz nie tym samym trybem; powinni działać zgodnie, nie czyniąc tych samych rzeczy.”

„Cierpliwość jest gorzka, ale jej owoce są słodkie.”

„Umiarkowanie i praca są prawdziwymi lekarzami człowieka: praca wzmaga apetyt, wstrzemięźliwość zaś zabrania nadużywać go.”

„Imam się przedsięwzięcia, które dotychczas nie miało przykładu i nie będzie miało naśladowcy.”

„Dzieciństwo jest snem rozumu.”

„Zapominacie, że owoce należą do wszystkich, a ziemia – nie należy do nikogo.”

„Kto pozwala źle mówić o przedmiocie miłości swojej, albo wcale nie kocha, albo jest podły.”

„Liga moich prześladowców ma zasięg światowy.”

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

Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Cytaty po angielsku

“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.”

Źródło: Emile or On Education

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

Jean Jacques Rousseau książka The Social Contract

Źródło: 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.”

Jean Jacques Rousseau książka The Social Contract

Źródło: The Social Contract

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

Źródło: Reveries of the Solitary Walker

“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.”

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

Jean Jacques Rousseau książka Confessions

Źródło: Confessions

“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.”

Źródło: 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.”

Jean Jacques Rousseau książka The Social Contract

Źródło: The Social Contract

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

Jean Jacques Rousseau książka The Social Contract

Źródło: 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.”

“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..”

Jean Jacques Rousseau książka The Social Contract

Źródło: The Social Contract

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

“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.”

Jean Jacques Rousseau książka The Social Contract

Źródło: 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.”

“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.”

Jean Jacques Rousseau Le devin du village

Le devin du village (1752)

“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.”

Jean Jacques Rousseau książka Emile, or On Education

Emile, or On Education (1762), Book III

“An honest man nearly always thinks justly.”

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

“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.

“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.”

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

“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.”

Jean Jacques Rousseau książka Emile, or On Education

Emile, or On Education (1762), Book I

“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.”

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

“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)
Źródło: 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