Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU, The Social Contract
Cities are the abyss of the human species.
JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU, Émile
If there were a nation of Gods, it would govern itself democratically. A government so perfect is not suited to men.
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU, The Social Contract, Or Principles of Political Right
If, by chance, someone among those men of extraordinary talent is found who has firmness of soul and who refuses to yield to the genius of his age and to debase himself with childish works, woe unto him! He will die in poverty and oblivion.
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU, Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts
It is easier to conquer than to administer. With enough leverage, a finger could overturn the world; but to support the world, one must have the shoulders of Hercules.
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU, The Social Contract, Or Principles of Political Right
It is not possible for minds degraded by a host of trivial concerns to ever rise to anything great.
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU, Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts
Good laws lead to the making of better ones; bad ones bring about worse.
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU, The Social Contract, Or Principles of Political Right
Nature never deceives us; it is always we who deceive ourselves.
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU, Emile
In the strict sense of the term, a true democracy has never existed, and never will exist. It is against natural order that the great number should govern and that the few should be governed.
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU, The Social Contract, Or Principles of Political Right
We must powder our wigs; that is why so many poor people have no bread.
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU, The First and Second Discourses Together with the Replies to Critics and Essay on the Origin of Languages
We are reduced to asking others what we are. We never dare to ask ourselves.
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU, Discourse on Inequality
I would rather be a man of paradoxes than a man of prejudices.
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU, Emile
The money that we possess is the instrument of liberty, that which we lack and strive to obtain is the instrument of slavery.
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU, Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau
The taste for splendor is hardly ever combined in the same souls with the taste for the honorable.
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU, Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts
People who know little are usually great talkers, while men who know much say little. It is plain that an ignorant person thinks everything he does know important, and he tells it to everybody. But a well-educated man is not so ready to display his learning; he would have too much to say, and he sees that there is much more to be said, so he holds his peace.
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU, Emile
Absolute silence leads to sadness. It is the image of death.
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU, The Reveries of the Solitary Walker
In truth, laws are always useful to those with possessions and harmful to those who have nothing; from which it follows that the social state is advantageous to men only when all possess something and none has too much.
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU, The Social Contract, Or Principles of Political Right
In a well-governed state, there are few punishments, not because there are many pardons, but because criminals are rare; it is when a state is in decay that the multitudes of crimes is a guarantee of impunity.
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU, The Social Contract, Or Principles of Political Right
The social pact, far from destroying natural equality, substitutes, on the contrary, a moral and lawful equality for whatever physical inequality that nature may have imposed on mankind; so that however unequal in strength and intelligence, men become equal by covenant and by right.
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU, The Social Contract, Or Principles of Political Right
Every person has a right to risk their own life for the preservation of it.
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU, The Social Contract, Or Principles of Political Right
Love childhood, indulge its sports, its pleasures, its delightful instincts. Who has not sometimes regretted that age when laughter was ever on the lips, and when the heart was ever at peace?
JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU, Emile
The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying This is mine, and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars, and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows: Beware of listening to this imposter; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody.
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU, Discourse on Inequality
Every man having been born free and master of himself, no one else may under any pretext whatever subject him without his consent. To assert that the son of a slave is born a slave is to assert that he is not born a man.
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU, The Social Contract, Or Principles of Political Right
What, then, is the government? An intermediary body established between the subjects and the sovereign for their mutual communication, a body charged with the execution of the laws and the maintenance of freedom, both civil and political.
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU, The Social Contract, Or Principles of Political Right
As soon as any man says of the affairs of the State "What does it matter to me?" the State may be given up for lost.
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU, The Social Contract, Or Principles of Political Right
Conscience is the voice of the soul; the passions are the voice of the body.
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU, Emile
Provided a man is not mad, he can be cured of every folly but vanity.
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU, Emile
Money is the seed of money, and the first guinea is sometimes more difficult to acquire than the second million.
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU, Discourse on Inequality
The happiest is he who suffers least; the most miserable is he who enjoys least.
JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU, Emile
Once you teach people to say what they do not understand, it is easy enough to get them to say anything you like.
JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU, Emile
Blushes are the sign of guilt; true innocence is ashamed of nothing.
JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU, Emile
Every artists wants to be applauded.
JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU, Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts
The right of conquest has no foundation other than the right of the strongest. If war does not give the conqueror the right to massacre the conquered peoples, the right to enslave them cannot be based upon a right which does not exist. No one has a right to kill an enemy except when he cannot make him a slave, and the right to enslave him cannot therefore be derived from the right to kill him. It is accordingly an unfair exchange to make him buy at the price of his liberty his life, over which the victor holds no right. Is it not clear that there is a vicious circle in founding the right of life and death on the right of slavery, and the right of slavery on the right of life and death?
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU, The Social Contract, Or Principles of Political Right
Never exceed your rights, and they will soon become unlimited.
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU, Discourse on Inequality
