Jean-Jacques Rousseau Quotes

Absolute silence leads to sadness. It is the image of death.

God made me and broke the mold.

People who know little are usually great talkers, while men who know much say little.

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

Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains.

I prefer liberty with danger than peace with slavery.

I only see clearly what I remember.

Do not judge, and you will never be mistaken.

Watch a cat when it enters a room for the first time. It searches and smells about, it is not quiet for a moment, it trusts nothing until it has examined and made acquaintance with everything.

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.

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

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

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. Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

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

Falsehood has an infinity of combinations, but truth has only one mode of being.

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

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

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

To renounce liberty is to renounce being a man, to surrender the rights of humanity and even its duties.

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

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

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.

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

I feel an indescribable ecstasy and delirium in melting, as it were, into the system of beings, in identifying myself with the whole of nature.

Liberty is obedience to the law which one has laid down for oneself.