Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a Genevan philosopher, writer, and composer. His political philosophy influenced the progress of the Enlightenment throughout Europe, as well as aspects of the French Revolution and the development of modern political, economic and educational thought. These Jean Jacques Rousseau quotes will motivate you.
Best Jean Jacques Rousseau Quotes
- “People in their natural state are basically good. But this natural innocence, however, is corrupted by the evils of society.” ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau
- “There are always four sides to a story: your side, their side, the truth and what really happened.” ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau
- “Freedom is the power to choose our own chains” ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau
- “I prefer liberty with danger than peace with slavery.” ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau
-
“Insults are the arguments employed by those who are in the wrong.” ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau
- “Those people who treat politics and morality separately will never understand either of them.” ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau
- “Falsehood has an infinity of combinations, but truth has only one mode of being.” ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau
- “People who know little are usually great talkers, while men who know much say little.” ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau
- “Why should we build our happiness on the opinons of others, when we can find it in our own hearts?” ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau
- “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.” ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau
-
“The bigger a state becomes the more liberty diminishes.” ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau
- “Plants are shaped by cultivation and men by education. .. We are born weak, we need strength; we are born totally unprovided, we need aid; we are born stupid, we need judgment. Everything we do not have at our birth and which we need when we are grown is given us by education.” ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau
- “One can buy anything with money except morality.” ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau
- “Reason deceives us; conscience, never.” ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau
- “The greatest braggarts are usually the biggest cowards.” ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau
- “The money you have gives you freedom; the money you pursue enslaves you.” ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau
-
“Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains.” ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau
- “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
- “Civilization is a hopeless race to discover remedies for the evils it produces.” ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau
- “Living is not breathing but doing.” ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau
- “The falsification of history has done more to impede human development than any one thing known to mankind.” ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau
-
“Plant and your spouse plants with you; weed and you weed alone.” ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau
- “In the strict sense of the term, a true democracy has never existed, and never will exist.” ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau
- “I love idleness. I love to busy myself about trifles, to begin a hundred things and not finish one of them, to come and go as my fancy bids me, to change my plan every moment, to follow a fly in all its circlings, to try and uproot a rock to see what is underneath, eagerly to begin a ten-years’ task to give it up after ten minutes: in short, to fritter away the whole day inconsequentially and incoherently, and to follow nothing but the whim of the moment.” ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau
- “Rather suffer an injustice than commit one.” ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau
- “What wisdom can you find that is greater than kindness?” ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau , Jean Jacques Rousseau quotes on wisdom
- “All of my misfortunes come from having thought too well of my fellows.” ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau
-
“I would rather be a man of paradoxes than a man of prejudices.” ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau
- “The first person who, having enclosed a plot of land, took it into his head to say this is mine and found people simple enough to believe him was the true founder of civil society. What crimes, wars, murders, what miseries and horrors would the human race have been spared, had someone pulled up the stakes or filled in the ditch and cried out to his fellow men: “Do not listen to this imposter. You are lost if you forget that the fruits of the earth belong to all and the earth to no one!” ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau
- “The one thing we do not know is the limit of the knowable.” ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau
- “I have never believed that man’s freedom consisted in doing what he wants, but rather in never doing what he does not want to do.” ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau
- “To be sane in a world of madman is in itself madness.” ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau
- “Free people, remember this maxim: we may acquire liberty, but it is never recovered if it is once lost.” ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau
- “It is manifestly contrary to the law of nature, however defined, that a handful of people should gorge themselves with superfluities while the hungry majority goes in need of necessities.” ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau
- “Laws are always useful to those who possess and vexatious to those who have nothing.” ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau
-
“No one is happy unless he respects himself.” ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau
- “By doing good we become good.” ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau
- “Trust your heart rather than your head.” ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau
- “It is too difficult to think nobly when one thinks only of earning a living.” ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau
- “Social man lives constantly outside himself.” ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau
- “Do not judge, and you will never be mistaken.” ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau
- “Do you not know…that a child badly taught is farther from being wise than one not taught at all?” ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau
- “The man who meditates is a depraved animal.” ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau
- “Supreme happiness consists in self-content.” ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau
-
“Girls must be thwarted early in life.” ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau
- “Happiness: a good bank account, a good cook, and a good digestion.” ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau
- “Liberty is obedience to the law which one has laid down for oneself” ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau , Jean Jacques Rousseau quotes on liberty
- “The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless.” ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau
- “Those that are most slow in making a promise are the most faithful in the performance of it.” ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau
- “You forget that the fruits belong to all and that the land belongs to no one.” ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau
- “All kinds of frankness and honesty are terrible crimes in the eyes of society.” ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau
- “Whoever refuses to obey the general will be forced to do so by the entire body; this means merely that he will be forced to be free.” ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau
- “The animals you eat are not those who devour others; you do not eat the carnivorous beasts, you take them as your pattern. You only hunger for the sweet and gentle creatures which harm no one, which follows you, serve you, and are devoured by you as the reward of their service.” ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau
-
“A feeble body weakens the mind.” ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau
- “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.” ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau
- “The person who has lived the most is not the one with the most years but the one with the richest experiences.” ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau
- “Conscience is the voice of the soul, the passions are the voice of the body. Is it astonishing that often these two languages contradict each other, and then to which must we listen? Too often reason deceives us; we have only too much acquired the right of refusing to listen to it; but conscience never deceives us; it is the true guide of man; it is to man what instinct is to the body; which follows it, obeys nature, and never is afraid of going astray.” ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau
-
“I may be no better, but at least I am different.” ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau
- “Socrates dies with honor, surrounded by his disciples listening to the most tender words -the easiest death that one could wish to die. Jesus dies in pain, dishonor, mockery, the object of universal cursing – the most horrible death that one could fear. At the receipt of the cup of poison, Socrates blesses him who could not give it to him without tears; Jesus, while suffering the sharpest pains, prays for His most bitter enemies. If Socrates lived and died like a philosopher, Jesus lived and died like a god.” ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau
- “I perceive God everywhere in His works. I sense Him in me; I see Him all around me.” ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau
- “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.” ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau
- “People who know little are usually great talkers, while men who know much say little. It is plain that an ignorant person thinks everything he does know important, and he tells it to everybody. But a well-educated man is not so ready to display his learning; he would have too much to say, and he sees that there is much more to be said, so he holds his peace.” ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau
- “If I am part of a group of 100 people, do 99 people have the right to sentence me to death, just because they are majority?” ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau
