Quote by Bertrand Russell

Rousseau was mad but influential; Hume was sane but had no followers.

— David Hume

“Rousseau alienated his aristocratic patrons; he quarrelled with most of his friends and well-wishers, including Hume and Diderot, many of whom also ended up…

— Pankaj Mishra

“[Rousseau is] the person whom I most revere both for the Force of [his] Genius and the Greatness of [his] mind [...]”

— David Hume

“What’s crucial about Rousseau, and many of his ideological successors, is that politics was always personal for him, unlike those whom Tocqueville faulted for…

— Pankaj Mishra

[Rousseau] has not had the precaution to throw any veil over his sentiments; and as he scorns to dissemble his contempt of established opinions,…

— David Hume

“Wasting the valuable time of others, thought Rousseau, was a bureaucrat’s ultimate revenge.”

— Daniel Silva

We remain in the Romantic cycle initiated by Rousseau: liberal idealism canceled by violence, barbarism, disillusionment and cynicism.

— Camille Paglia

“The recent explosions, from India to the United States, of ressentiment against writers and journalists as well as politicians, technocrats, businessmen and bankers reveal…

— Pankaj Mishra

“Man requires a healing education which returns him to himself. Rousseau's paradoxes- his attack on the arts and the sciences and his practice of…

— Allan Bloom

“Contra Hobbes and Locke, Rousseau refused to believe that the obligations to civil society could be derived from self-interest, the preservation of life or…

— Pankaj Mishra

Simply follow nature, Rousseau declares. Sade, laughing grimly, agrees.

— Camille Paglia

“The real social contract, (Edmund Burke) argued, was not Rousseau's social contract between the noble savage and the General Will, but a "partnership" between…

— Niall Ferguson