Jean-Jacques Rousseau Quotes
People in their natural state are basically good. But this natural innocence,however, is corrupted by the evils of society.
There are always four sides to a story: your side, their side, the truth and what really happened.
The freedom of Mankind does not lie in the fact that can do what we want, but that we do not have to do that which we do not want.
People who know little are usually great talkers, while men who know much say little.
Why should we build our happiness on the opinons of others, when we can find it in our own hearts?
Those people who treat politics and morality separately will never understand either of them.
I am not made like any of those I have seen. I venture to believe that I am not made like any of those who are in existence. If I am not better, at least I am different.
The person who has lived the most is not the one with the most years but the one with the richest experiences.
Free people, remember this maxim: we may acquire liberty, but it is never recovered if it is once lost.
Once you teach people to say what they do not understand, it is easy enough to get them to say anything you like.
Civilization is a hopeless race to discover remedies for the evils it produces.
I have never believed that man's freedom consisted in doing what he wants, but rather in never doing what he does not want to do.
Those that are most slow in making a promise are the most faithful in the performance of it.
It is unnatural for a majority to rule, for a majority can seldom be organized and united for specific action, and a minority can.
Do not base your life on the judgments of others; first, because they are as likely to be mistaken as you are, and further, because you cannot know that they are telling you their true thoughts.
To write a good love letter, you ought to begin without knowing what you mean to say, and to finish without knowing what you have written.
The world is the book of women. Whatever knowledge they may possess is more commonly acquired by observation than by reading.
The falsification of history has done more to impede human development than any one thing known to mankind.
Nature wants children to be children before men... Childhood has its own seeing, thinking and feeling.
That man is truly free who desires what he is able to perform, and does what he desires.
It is too difficult to think nobly when one thinks only of earning a living.
Virtue is a state of war, and to live in it we have always to combat with ourselves.
...in respect of riches, no citizen shall ever be wealthy enough to buy another, and none poor enough to be forced to sell himself.
It is manifestly contrary to the law of nature, however defined, that a handful of people should gorge themselves with superfluities while the hungry majority goes in need of necessities.
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?
Heroes are not known by the loftiness of their carriage; the greatest braggarts are generally the merest cowards.
There is no subjection so perfect as that which keeps the appearance of freedom.
Provided a man is not mad, he can be cured of every folly but vanity; there is no cure for this but experience, if indeed there is any cure for it at all.