Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Ordinary readers, forgive my paradoxes: one must make them when one reflects; and whatever you may say, I prefer being a man with paradoxes than a man with prejudices.

Force does not constitute right... obedience is due only to legitimate powers.

I hate books; they only teach us to talk about things we know nothing about.

Money is the seed of money, and the first guinea is sometimes more difficult to acquire than the second million.

Take from the philosopher the pleasure of being heard and his desire for knowledge ceases.

We do not know what is really good or bad fortune.

I have resolved on an enterprise that has no precedent and will have no imitator. I want to set before my fellow human beings a man in every way true to nature; and that man will be myself.

When something an affliction happens to you, you either let it defeat you, or you defeat it.

Every man has a right to risk his own life for the preservation of it.

Most nations, as well as people are impossible only in their youth; they become incorrigible as they grow older.

Although modesty is natural to man, it is not natural to children. Modesty only begins with the knowledge of evil.

However great a man's natural talent may be, the act of writing cannot be learned all at once.

It is unnatural for a majority to rule, for a majority can seldom be organized and united for specific action, and a minority can.

Our greatest evils flow from ourselves.

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

Religious persecutors are not believers, they are rascals.

Remorse sleeps during prosperity but awakes bitter consciousness during adversity.

To endure is the first thing that a child ought to learn, and that which he will have the most need to know.

I undertake the same project as Montaigne, but with an aim contrary to his own: for he wrote his Essays only for others, and I write my reveries only for myself.

I only see clearly what I remember.

Do I dare set forth here the most important, the most useful rule of all education? It is not to save time, but to squander it.

It is a mania shared by philosophers of all ages to deny what exists and to explain what does not exist.

The first step towards vice is to shroud innocent actions in mystery, and whoever likes to conceal something sooner or later has reason to conceal it.

The English are predisposed to pride, the French to vanity.

All of my misfortunes come from having thought too well of my fellows.

Base souls have no faith in great individuals.

The body politic, as well as the human body, begins to die as soon as it is born, and carries itself the causes of its destruction.

Our affections as well as our bodies are in perpetual flux.

O love, if I regret the age when one savors you, it is not for the hour of pleasure, but for the one that follows it.

The training of children is a profession, where we must know how to waste time in order to save it.

Childhood is the sleep of reason.

Fame is but the breath of people, and that often unwholesome.

We are born, so to speak, twice over; born into existence, and born into life; born a human being, and born a man.

We pity in others only the those evils which we ourselves have experienced.

I long remained a child, and I am still one in many respects.

Insults are the arguments employed by those who are in the wrong.

The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless.

Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains.

Those that are most slow in making a promise are the most faithful in the performance of it.

Gratitude is a duty which ought to be paid, but which none have a right to expect.

I may be no better, but at least I am different.

You forget that the fruits belong to all and that the land belongs to no one.

The person who has lived the most is not the one with the most years but the one with the richest experiences.

Whoever blushes is already guilty; true innocence is ashamed of nothing.

Heroes are not known by the loftiness of their carriage; the greatest braggarts are generally the merest cowards.

I have always said and felt that true enjoyment can not be described.

A feeble body weakens the mind.

We should not teach children the sciences; but give them a taste for them.

It is too difficult to think nobly when one thinks only of earning a living.

We are born weak, we need strength; helpless, we need aid; foolish, we need reason. All that we lack at birth, all that we need when we come to man's estate, is the gift of education.