It is not possible for minds degraded by a host of trivial concerns to ever rise to anything great. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau Copy Share Image
The mind grows narrow in proportion as the soul grows corrupt. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau Copy Share Image
I can only meditate when I am walking. When I stop, I cease to think; my mind works only with my legs. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau Copy Share Image
For, as I think I have said, I can only meditate when I am walking. When I stop I cease to think;… — Jean-Jacques Rousseau Copy Share Image
“Doubt with regard to what we ought to know is a condition too violent for the human mind; it cannot long be… — Jean-Jacques Rousseau Copy Share Image
Presence of mind, penetration, fine observation, are the sciences of women; ability to avail themselves of these is their talent. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau Copy Share Image
Never did I think so much, exist so much, be myself so much as in the journeys I have made alone and… — Jean-Jacques Rousseau Copy Share Image
Two things, almost incompatible, are united in me in a manner which I am unable to understand: a very ardent temperament, lively… — Jean-Jacques Rousseau Copy Share Image
“To this motive which encourages me is added another which made up my mind: after I have upheld, according to my natural… — Jean-Jacques Rousseau Copy Share Image
“I am not worried about pleasing clever minds or fashionable people. In every period there will be men fated to be governed by the opinions of their century, their country, and their society. For that very reason, a freethinker or philosopher today would have been nothing but a fanatic at the time of the League.* One must not write for… — Jean-Jacques Rousseau Copy Share
“...there is no real advance in human reason, for what we gain in one direction we lose in another; for all minds start from the same point, and as the time spent in learning what others have thought is so much time lost in learning to think for ourselves, we have more acquired knowledge and less vigor of mind. Our… — Jean-Jacques Rousseau Copy Share
“I open the books on Right and on ethics; I listen to the professors and jurists; and, my mind full of their… — Jean-Jacques Rousseau Copy Share Image
“The extreme inequality of our ways of life, the excess of idleness among some and the excess of toil among others, the… — 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
