Jean-Jacques Rousseau

It is unnatural for a majority to rule, for a majority can seldom be organized and united for specific action, and a minority can.
~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

I have resolved on an enterprise that has no precedent and will have no imitator. I want to set before my fellow human beings a man in every way true to nature; and that man will be myself.
~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

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.
~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

We do not know what is really good or bad fortune.
~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Every man has the right to risk his own life in order to preserve it. Has it ever been said that a man who throws himself out the window to escape from a fire is guilty of suicide?
~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Heroes are not known by the loftiness of their carriage; the greatest braggarts are generally the merest cowards.
~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

No man has any natural authority over his fellow men.
~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Plant and your spouse plants with you; weed and you weed alone.
~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Ordinary readers, forgive my paradoxes: one must make them when one reflects; and whatever you may say, I prefer being a man with paradoxes than a man with prejudices.
~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The body politic, as well as the human body, begins to die as soon as it is born, and carries itself the causes of its destruction.
~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

You forget that the fruits belong to all and that the land belongs to no one.
~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Reading, solitude, idleness, a soft and sedentary life, intercourse with women and young people, these are perilous paths for a young man, and these lead him constantly into danger.
~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

I undertake the same project as Montaigne, but with an aim contrary to his own: for he wrote his Essays only for others, and I write my reveries only for myself.
~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Falsehood has an infinity of combinations, but truth has only one mode of being.
~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Nature never deceives us; it is we who deceive ourselves.
~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

People who know little are usually great talkers, while men who know much say little.
~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Most nations, as well as people are impossible only in their youth; they become incorrigible as they grow older.
~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Our will is always for our own good, but we do not always see what that is.
~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Money is the seed of money, and the first guinea is sometimes more difficult to acquire than the second million.
~ Jean-Jacques Roussea

Insults are the arguments employed by those who are in the wrong.
~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Do I dare set forth here the most important, the most useful rule of all education? It is not to save time, but to squander it.
~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Although modesty is natural to man, it is not natural to children.
~ 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

Modesty only begins with the knowledge of evil.
~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Happiness: a good bank account, a good cook, and a good digestion.
~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.
~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The English think they are free. They are free only during the election of members of parliament.
~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

We are born, so to speak, twice over; born into existence, and born into life; born a human being, and born a man.
~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau