Jean-Jacques Rousseau

By doing good we become good.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The passions are the voice of the body.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Freedom is the power to choose our own chains

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

To live is not breathing it is action.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Childhood is the sleep of reason.C

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

“He who blushes is already guilty.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

A person who can break wind is not dead.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

I do not know is a phrase which becomes us.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Generally we obtain very surely and very speedily what we are not too anxious to obtain.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Liberty is obedience to the law which one has laid down for oneself

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

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

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Many men, seemingly impelled by fortune, hasten forward to meet misfortune half way.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The greatest braggarts are usually the biggest cowards.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The happiest is he who suffers least; the most miserable is he who enjoys least.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Frequent punishments are always a sign of weakness or laziness on the part of a government.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

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

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Conscience is the voice of the soul, the passions are the voice of the body. It is strange that these voices often…

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

General abstract truth is the most precious of all blessings; without it, man is blind; it is the eye of reason.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Chemistry... is like the maid occupied with daily civilisation; she is busy with fertilisers, medicines, glass, insecticides ... for she dispenses the recipes.

— 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

“How could I become wicked, when I had nothing but examples of gentleness before my eyes, and none around me but the…

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Women speak at an earlier age, more easily, and more agreeably than men; they are accused also of speaking more; this is…

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The French painter Rousseau was once asked why he put a naked woman on a red sofa in the middle of his…

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The writings of women are always cold and pretty like themselves. There is as much wit as you may desire, but never…

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The English people believes itself to be free; it is gravely mistaken; it is free only during election of members of parliament;…

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

“How much more reasonable is it to say with the sage Plato, that the perfect happiness of a state consists in the…

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

What, then, is the government? An intermediary body established between the subjects and the sovereign for their mutual communication, and charged with…

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

“nunca hará mal alguno a otro hombre, ni aun a cualquier ser sensible, salvo el legítimo caso en que, hallándose comprometida su…

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

To live is not to breathe but to act. It is to make use of our organs, our senses, our faculties, of…

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The word ‘slavery’ and ‘right’ are contradictory, they cancel each other out. Whether as between one man and another, or between one…

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Leave those vain moralists, my friend, and return to the depth of your soul: that is where you will always rediscover the…

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Too much apparatus, designed to guide us in experiments and to supplement the exactness of our senses, makes us neglect to use…

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

“O Fabricius! What would your great soul have thought, if to your own misfortune you had been called back to life and…

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

“If there is a state where the soul can find a resting-place secure enough to establish itself and concentrate its entire being…

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

“others, without further ceremony ascribing to the strongest an authority over the weakest, have immediately struck out government, without thinking of the…

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

“The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying This is mine , and found people simple…

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

“God (Nature, in my view) makes all things good; man meddles with them and they become evil. He fores one soil to…

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Teach your scholar to observe the phenomena of nature; you will soon rouse his curiosity, but if you would have it grow,…

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

“We no longer dare seem what we really are, but lie under a perpetual restraint; in the meantime the herd of men,…

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

“The extreme inequalities in the manner of living of the several classes of mankind, the excess of idleness in some, and of…

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau