God is intelligent; but in what manner? Man is intelligent by the act of reasoning, but the supreme intelligence lies under no necessity to reason. He requires neither premise nor consequences; nor even the simple form of a proposition. His knowledge is purely intuitive. He beholds equally what is and what will be. All truths are to Him as one… — Jean-Jacques Rousseau Copy Share
Usurpers always bring about or select troublous times to get passed, under cover of the public terror, destructive laws, which the people… — Jean-Jacques Rousseau Copy Share Image
Watch a cat when it enters a room for the first time. It searches and smells about, it is not quiet for… — Jean-Jacques Rousseau Copy Share Image
Not all the subtilties of metaphysics can make me doubt a moment of the immortality of the soul, and of a beneficent… — Jean-Jacques Rousseau Copy Share Image
We do not know either unalloyed happiness or unmitigated misfortune. Everything in this world is a tangled yarn; we taste nothing in… — Jean-Jacques Rousseau Copy Share Image
I love idleness. I love to busy myself about trifles, to begin a hundred things and not finish one of them, to… — Jean-Jacques Rousseau Copy Share Image
Everything is in constant flux on this earth. Nothing keeps the same unchanging shape, and our affections, being attached to things outside… — Jean-Jacques Rousseau Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
Her dignity consists in being unknown to the world; her glory is in the esteem of her husband; her pleasures in the happiness of… — Jean-Jacques Rousseau Copy Share Image
Take the course opposite to custom and you will almost always do well. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau Copy Share Image
Everything we do not have at our birth and which we need when we are grown is given to us by education. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau Copy Share Image
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 some one pulled up the stakes or filled in… — Jean-Jacques Rousseau Copy Share
...in respect of riches, no citizen shall ever be wealthy enough to buy another, and none poor enough to be forced to sell himself. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau Copy Share Image
Take from the philosopher the pleasure of being heard and his desire for knowledge ceases. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau Copy Share Image
Men, in general, are not this or that, they are what they are made to be. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau Copy Share Image
I would rather be a man of paradoxes than a man of prejudices. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau Copy Share Image
“O Fabricius! What would your great soul have thought, if to your own misfortune you had been called back to life and had seen the pompous face of this Rome saved by your efforts and which your honourable name had distinguished more than all its conquests? 'Gods,' you would have said, 'what has happened to those thatched roofs and those… — Jean-Jacques Rousseau Copy Share
“The sword wears out its sheath, as it is sometimes said. That is my story. My passions have made me live, and my passions… — Jean-Jacques Rousseau Copy Share Image
Whence do I get my rules of conduct? I find them in my heart. Whatever I feel to be good is good. Whatever I… — Jean-Jacques Rousseau Copy Share Image
“If one divided all of human science into two parts - the one common to all men, the other particular to the learned - the latter would be quite small in comparison with the former. But we are hardly aware of what is generally attained, because it is attained without thought and even before the age of reason; because, moreover,… — Jean-Jacques Rousseau Copy Share