Jean-Jacques Rousseau Quotes

• The English are predisposed to pride, the French to vanity.

  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

• Take the course opposite to custom and you will almost always do well.

  Jean-Jacques Rousseau

• Take from the philosopher the pleasure of being heard and his desire for knowledge ceases.

  Jean-Jacques Rousseau

• Remorse sleeps during prosperity but awakes bitter consciousness during adversity.

  Jean-Jacques Rousseau

• Religious persecutors are not believers, they are rascals.

  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

• Our will is always for our own good, but we do not always see what that is.

  Jean-Jacques Rousseau

• Our greatest evils flow from ourselves.

  Jean-Jacques Rousseau

• Our affections as well as our bodies are in perpetual flux.

  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

• O love, if I regret the age when one savors you, it is not for the hour of pleasure, but for the one that follows it.

  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

• No man has any natural authority over his fellow men.

  Jean-Jacques Rousseau

• Nature never deceives us; it is we who deceive ourselves.

  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

• Money is the seed of money, and the first guinea is sometimes more difficult to acquire than the second million.

  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

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

  Jean-Jacques Rousseau

• It is a mania shared by philosophers of all ages to deny what exists and to explain what does not exist.

  Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (88)

Birth:	28th June, 1712
Death:	2nd July, 1778
Nationality:	French
Profession:	Philosopher

About

Jean-Jacques Rousseau was born in Geneva, Switzerland. He was a Swiss-born French philosopher, novelist and composer of the 18th century. His political philosophy influenced the Enlightenment in France and across Europe, as well as aspects of the French Revolution and the overall development of modern political and educational thought. He wrote several books include: Discourse on the Arts and Sciences (essay), Discourse on Inequality, Julie, or the New Heloise (novel), Emile, or On Education (novel), The Social Contract, Reveries of a Solitary Walker, and Confessions (autobiography).

Related Authors

• Gabriel Marcel
• Friedrich Engels
• Ernest Shurtleff Holmes
• Alain de Botton
• Theodore Zeldin
• Raoul Vaneigem
• Immanuel Kant
• Mac MacKenzie
• Sri Aurobindo
• Mary Daly

Advertisement

Today's Anniversary - 25th November

Births

• 1978 - Joseph Lancaster
• 1926 - Poul Anderson
• 1869 - Ben Lindsey
• 1938 - Shelagh Delaney
• 1936 - William McIlvanney

Deaths

• 1974 - U Thant
• 1998 - Nelson Goodman
• 1973 - Laurence Harvey
• 2002 - Karel Reisz
• 1970 - Yukio Mishima