Death Quote by Randall Jarrell

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

— Daniel Silva

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

— David Hume

“And again, just in case we have missed Hegel’s point: “A single person, I need hardly say, is something subordinate, and as such he…

— Stephen R.C. Hicks

“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

“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

“The inquiry begins with Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–78), who was the first of the modern intellectuals, their archetype and in many ways the most influential…

— Paul Johnson

“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

“[They] may have for instance taken the view of Edmund Burke, who in the 18th century made the central conservative insight; that a culture…

— Douglas Murray

“The first articulate explorer and to an extent even theorist of intimacy was Jean-Jacques Rousseau who, characteristically enough, is the only great author still…

— Hannah Arendt

“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