Quotes & Sayings About Rousseau

Coercion created slavery, the cowardice of the slaves perpetuated it. — Jean-Baptiste Rousseau

I can discover nothing in any mere animal but an ingenious machine, to which nature has given senses to wind itself up, and guard, to a certain degree, against everything that might destroy or disorder it. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

And just as Catskin went to the ball, and Cendrillon, and Aschenputtel, so must you. The ball that will be given soon in the palace; I've heard talk of it in the kitchens. The servants say one is held each year. Have you never gone?"
She shook her head.
"Then you must go this year dressed in a fine gown as it is done in the stories."
She sat staring at him. "Me, Gillie? I don't belong at the ball."
"As much as Cinderella did."
"But they are only stories; they're not things that can happen." She studied him for a long time. He did not seem to be making a joke.
"It's what you dream, Thursey. You should do what you dream of doing, else where is the good in dreaming? — Shirley Rousseau Murphy

Temperance and labor are the two real physicians of man. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

I hear from afar the shouts of that false wisdom which is ever dragging us onwards, counting the present as nothing, and pursuing without pause a future which flies as we pursue, that false wisdom which removes us from our place and never brings us to any other. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

There is, I am sensible, an age at which every individual of you would choose to stop; and you will look out for the age at which, had you your wish, your species had stopped. Uneasy at your present condition for reasons which threaten your unhappy posterity with still greater uneasiness, you will perhaps wish it were in your power to go back; and this sentiment ought to be considered, as the panegyric of your first parents, the condemnation of you contemporaries, and a source of terror to all those who may have the misfortune of succeeding you. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

This poem will never reach its destination. On Rousseau's Ode To Posterity — Voltaire

Men and women are made for each other, but their mutual dependence differs in degrees; man is dependent on woman through his desires; woman is dependent on man through her desires and also through her needs; he could do without her better than she can do without him. She cannot fulfill her purpose in life without his aid, without his goodwill, without his respect ... Nature herself has decreed that woman, both for herself and her children, should be at the mercy of man s judgment. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

It is in order not to become victim of an assassin that we consent to die if
we become assassins. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

French philosopher whom professional philosophers generally accord highest honors is Descartes. Montaigne and Pascal, Voltaire and Rousseau, Bergson and Sartre do not enjoy their greatest vogue among philosophers, and of these only Rousseau has had any considerable influence on the history of philosophy (through Kant and Hegel). — Friedrich Nietzsche

At first we will only skim the surface of the earth like young starlings, but soon, emboldened by practice and experience, we will spring into the air with the impetuousness of the eagle, diverting ourselves by watching the childish behavior of the little men or awling miserably around on the earth below us. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

From this moment there would be no question of virtue or morality; for despotism cui ex honesto nulla est spes, wherever it prevails, admits no other master; it no sooner speaks than probity and duty lose their weight and blind obedience is the only virtue which slaves can still practice. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

There is a period in life when we go backwards as we advance. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

In America, Rousseauism has turned Freud's conflict-based psychoanalysis into weepy hand-holding. Contemporary liberalism is untruthful about cosmic realities. Therapy, defining anger and hostility in merely personal terms, seeks to cure what was never a problem before Rousseau. Mediterranean, as well as African-American, culture has a lavish system of language and gesture to channel and express negative emotion. Rousseauists who take the Utopian view of personality are always distressed or depressed over world outbreaks of violence and anarchy. But because, as a Sadean, I believe history is in nature and of it, I tend to be far more cheerful and optimistic than my liberal friends. Despite crime's omnipresence, things work in society, because biology compels it. Order eventually restores itself, by psychic equilibrium. Films like Seven Samurai (1954) and Two Women (1961) accurately show the breakdown of social controls as a regression to animal-like squalor. — Camille Paglia

The less reasonable a cult is, the more men seek to establish it by force. — Jean-Baptiste Rousseau

Remorse sleeps in the atmosphere of prosperity. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Happiness is a good bank account, a good cook, and a good digestion. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

When one has suffered or fears suffering, one pities those who suffer; but when one is suffering, one pities only oneself. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

It was Rousseau who was largely responsible for the problem by giving currency to the idea that freedom can exist without responsibility and discipline. — Colin Wilson

Or, rather, let us be more simple and less vain. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The political terms 'will' and 'popular will' have a long track record in Western history going back to Rousseau. That record is profoundly anti-democratic, essentially inviting elites to interpret what the common people believe and want. In litigious modern America, that would be a judicial elite telling us how we meant to vote or should have voted. — John Leo

It is a great and beautiful spectacle to see a man somehow emerging from oblivion by his own efforts, dispelling with the light of his reason the shadows in which nature had enveloped him, rising above himself, soaring in his mind right up to the celestial regions, moving, like the sun, with giant strides through the vast extent of the universe, and, what is even greater and more difficult, returning to himself in order to study man there and learn of his nature, his obligations, and his end. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Anticipation and Hope are born twins. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Cities are the sinks of the human race. — Henri Rousseau

Truth is an homage that the good man pays to his own dignity. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Whoever refuses to obey the general will will be forced to do so by the entire body; this means merely that he will be forced to be free. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

An animal, at the end of a few months, is what it will be all its life; and its species, at the end of a thousand years, is what it was in the first of those thousand years. Why is man alone subject to becoming an imbecile? — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Nothing on this earth is worth
buying at the price of human blood. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

My love for imaginary objects and my facility in lending myself to them ended by disillusioning me with everything around me, and determined that love of solitude which I have retained ever since that time. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Great men never make bad use of their superiority. They see it and feel it and are not less modest. The more they have, the more they know their own deficiencies. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

I ask: which of the two, civil or natural life, is more likely to become insufferable to those who live it? We see about us practically no people who do not complain about their existence; many even deprive themselves of it to the extent they are able, and the combination of divine and human laws is hardly enough to stop this disorder. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

It is pity in which the state of nature takes the place of laws, morals and virtues, with the added advantage that no one there is tempted to disobey its gentle voice. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The person who has lived the most is not the one with the most years but the one with the richest experiences. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

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

Teach your scholar to observe the phenomena of nature; you will soon rouse his curiosity, but if you would have it grow, do not be in too great a hurry to satisfy this curiosity. Put the problems before him and let him solve them himself. Let him know nothing because you have told him, but because he has learnt it for himself. Let him not be taught science, let him discover it. If ever you substitute authority for reason he will cease to reason; he will be a mere plaything of other people's thoughts. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Whoever blushes is already guilty; true innocence is ashamed of nothing. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

To be sane in a world of madman is in itself madness. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Happy am I, for every time I meditate on governments, I always find new reasons in my inquiries for loving my own country. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

My liveliest delight was in having conquered myself. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

[Rousseau] has not had the precaution to throw any veil over his sentiments; and as he scorns to dissemble his contempt of established opinions, he could not wonder that all the zealots were in arms against him. — David Hume

Princes always are always happy to see developing among their subjects the taste for agreeable arts and for superfluities which do not result in the export of money. For quite apart from the fact that with these they nourish that spiritual pettiness so appropriate for servitude, they know very well that all the needs which people give themselves are so many chains binding them. When Alexander wished to keep the Ichthyophagi dependent on him, he forced them to abandon fishing and to nourish themselves on foods common to other people. And no one has been able to subjugate the savages in America, who go around quite naked and live only from what their hunting provides. In fact, what yoke could be imposed on men who have no need of anything? — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Your first duty is to be humane. Love childhood. Look with friendly eyes on its games, its pleasures, its amiable dispositions. Which of you does not sometimes look back regretfully on the age when laughter was ever on the lips and the heart free of care? Why steal from the little innocents the enjoyment of a time that passes all too quickly? — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

I do not know the art of being clear to those who do not want to be attentive. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Never did I think so much, exist so much, be myself so much as in the journeys I have made alone and on foot. Walking has something about it which animates and enlivens my ideas. I can hardly think while I am still; my body must be in motion to move my mind. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

He thinks like a philosopher, but governs like a king. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The social compact sets up among the citizens as equality of such kind, that they all bind themselves to observe the same conditions and should therefore all enjoy the same rights. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

It is believed that physiognomy is only a simple development of the features already marked out by nature. It is my opinion, however, that in addition to this development, the features come insensibly to be formed and assume their shape from the frequent and habitual expression of certain affections of the soul. These affections are marked on the countenance; nothing is more certain than this; and when they turn into habits, they must leave on it durable impressions. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Conscience is the voice of the soul, the passions are the voice of the body. Is it astonishing that often these two languages contradict each other, and then to which must we listen? Too often reason deceives us; we have only too much acquired the right of refusing to listen to it; but conscience never deceives us; it is the true guide of man; it is to man what instinct is to the body; which follows it, obeys nature, and never is afraid of going astray. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Among the many short cuts to science, we badly need someone to teach us the art of learning with difficulty. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The first sentiment of man was that of his existence, his first care that of preserving it. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Our wisdom is slavish prejudice, our customs consist in control,
constraint, compulsion. Civilised man is born and dies a slave.
The infant is bound up in swaddling clothes, the corpse is nailed
down in his coffin. All his life long man is imprisoned by our
institutions. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The extreme inequality of our ways of life, the excess of idleness among some and the excess of toil among others, the ease of stimulating and gratifying our appetites and our senses, the over-elaborate foods of the rich, which inflame and overwhelm them with indigestion, the bad food of the poor, which they often go withotu altogether, so hat they over-eat greedily when they have the opportunity; those late nights, excesses of all kinds, immoderate transports of every passion, fatigue, exhaustion of mind, the innumerable sorrows and anxieties that people in all classes suffer, and by which the human soul is constantly tormented: these are the fatal proofs that most of our ills are of our own making, and that we might have avoided nearly all of them if only we had adhered to the simple, unchanging and solitary way of life that nature ordained for us. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Socrates dies with honor, surrounded by his disciples listening to the most tender words -the easiest death that one could wish to die. Jesus dies in pain, dishonor, mockery, the object of universal cursing - the most horrible death that one could fear. At the receipt of the cup of poison, Socrates blesses him who could not give it to him without tears; Jesus, while suffering the sharpest pains, prays for His most bitter enemies. If Socrates lived and died like a philosopher, Jesus lived and died like a god. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Cities are the abyss of the human species. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Our passions are the chief means of self-preservation; to try to destroy them is therefore as absurd as it is useless; this would be to overcome nature, to reshape God's handiwork. If God bade man annihilate the passions he has given him, God would bid him be and not be; He would contradict himself. He has never given such a foolish commandment, there is nothing like it written on the heart of man, and what God will have a man do, He does not leave to the words of another man. He speaks Himself; His words are written in the secret heart. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Gillie was grinning at the boy's indignant anger. He put a hand on the pages shoulder and looked coldly at Augusta. "Do you call my page a liar, old woman? And who are you to speak of this lady as your charge? My page is no liar, just as Thursey is not your charge. Not in any way. She is your landlord, for it is her inn you occupy. And it is to her you will answer for its keeping. She is beholden to no one, unless it would be the people of Gies in the same manner as I am - for she may be their princess soon. If she is willing," he added gently. — Shirley Rousseau Murphy

[T]he man who meditates is a depraved animal. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

However, it was the great 18th century social philosophers John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau who brought the concept of a social contract between citizens and governments sharply into political thinking, paving the way for popular democracy and constitutional republicanism. — Simon Mainwaring

Those whom nature destined to make her disciples have no need of teachers. Bacon, Descartes, Newton - these tutors of the human race had no need of tutors themselves, and what guides could have led them to those places where their vast genius carried them? Ordinary teachers could only have limited their understanding by confining it to their own narrow capabilities. With the first obstacles, they learned to exert themselves and made the effort to traverse the immense space they moved through. If it is necessary to permit some men to devote themselves to the study of the sciences and the arts, that should be only for those who feel in themselves the power to walk alone in those men's footsteps and to move beyond them. It is the task of this small number of people to raise monuments to the glory of the human mind. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

I will simply ask: What is philosophy? What do the
writings of the best known philosophers contain? What are the
lessons of these friends of wisdom? To listen to them, would
one not take them for a troupe of charlatans crying out in a
public square, each from his own corner: "Come to me. I'm the
only one who is not wrong"? — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The greatest horrors in the history of mankind are not due to the ambition of the Napoleons or the vengeance of the Agamemnons, but to the doctrinaire philosophers. The theories of the sentimentalist Rousseau inspired the integrity of the passionless Robespierre. The cold-blooded calculations of Karl Marx led to the judicial and business-like operations of the Cheka. — Aleister Crowley

It is hard to prevent oneself from believing what one so keenly desires, and who can doubt that the interest we have in admitting or denying the reality of the Judgement to come determines the faith of most men in accordance with their hopes and fears. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

She was dull, unattractive, couldn't tell the time, count money or tie her own shoe laces ... But I loved her — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The man is best served who has no occasion to put the hands of others at the end of his own arms. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Fame is but the breath of people, and that often unwholesome. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

I feel an indescribable ecstasy and delirium in melting, as it were, into the system of being, in identifying myself with the whole of nature.. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

If there wasn't a God we would have to invent one to keep people sane. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

I cannot repeat too often that to control the child one must often control oneself. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Though it may be the peculiar happiness of Socrates and other geniuses of his stamp, to reason themselves into virtue, the human species would long ago have ceased to exist, had it depended entirely for its preservation on the reasonings of the individuals that compose it. Par 1, 36 — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Everything we do not have at our birth and which we need when we are grown is given to us by education. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

If we assume man has been corrupted by an artificial civilization, what is the natural state? the state of nature from which he has been removed? imagine, wandering up and down the forest without industry, without speech, and without home. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

There are two ways to make people richer, reasoned Rousseau: to give them more money or to restrain their desires. — Alain De Botton

Chemistry ... is like the maid occupied with daily civilisation; she is busy with fertilisers, medicines, glass, insecticides ... for she dispenses the recipes. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Let it not, therefore, be said that the Sovereign is not subject to the laws of his State; since the contrary is a true proposition of the right of nations, which flattery has sometimes attacked but good princes have always defended as the tutelary divinity of their dominions. How much more legitimate is it to say with the wise Plato, that the perfect felicity of a kingdom consists in the obedience of subjects to their prince, and of the prince to the laws, and in the laws being just and constantly directed to the public good! — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Plants are shaped by cultivation and men by education.. We are born weak, we need strength; we are born totally unprovided, we need aid; we are born stupid, we need judgment. Everything we do not have at our birth and which we need when we are grown is given us by education. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

It is in man's heart that the life of nature's spectacle exists; to see it, one must feel it. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

I believed that I was approaching the end of my days without having tasted to the full any of the pleasures for which my heart thirsted ... without having ever tasted that passion which, through lack of an object, was always suppressed ... The impossibility of attaining the real persons precipitated me into the land of chimeras; and seeing nothing that existed worthy of my exalted feelings, I fostered them in an ideal world which my creative imagination soon peopled with beings after my own heart. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Smell is the sense of memory and desire. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Since nothing is less stable among men than those external relationships which chance brings about more often than wisdom, and which are called weakness or power, wealth or poverty, human establishments appear at first glance to be based on piles of shifting sand. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The people is never corrupted, but it is often deceived ... — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Out of his zestful study of Man, from Thucydides to the Encyclopaedists, from Seneca to Rousseau, he had confirmed into an unassailable conviction his earliest conscious impressions of the general insanity of his own species. — Rafael Sabatini

Reading, solitude, idleness, a soft and sedentary life, intercourse with women and young people, these are perilous paths for a young man, and these lead him constantly into danger. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The presence of cats exercises such a magic influence upon highly organized men of intellect. This is why these long-tailed Graces of the animal kingdom ... have been the favorite animal of a Mahommed, Cardinal Richelieu, Crebillon, Rousseau, Wieland. — Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch

Do we wish men to be virtuous? Then let us begin by making them love their country. — Jean-Baptiste Rousseau

Men will argue more philosophically about the human heart; but women will read the heart of man better than they. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

In order not to find me in contradiction with myself, I should be allowed enough time to explain myself — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Every artists wants to be applauded — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

I felt before I thought — Henri Rousseau

[Rousseau is] the person whom I most revere both for the Force of [his] Genius and the Greatness of [his] mind [ ... ] — David Hume

The indolence I love is not that of a lazy fellow who sits with his arms across in total inaction, and thinks no more than he acts, but that of a child which is incessantly in motion doing nothing, and that of a dotard who wanders from his subject. I love to amuse myself with trifles, by beginning a hundred things and never finishing one of them, by going or coming as I take either into my head, by changing my project at every instant, by following a fly through all its windings, in wishing to overturn a rock to see what is under it, by undertaking with ardor the work of ten years, and abandoning it without regret at the end of ten minutes; finally, in musing from morning until night without order or coherence, and in following in everything the caprice of a moment. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Universities are no longer educational in any sense of the word that Rousseau would have recognised. Instead, they have become unabashed instruments of capital. Confronted with this squalid betrayal, one imagines he would have felt sick and oppressed. — Terry Eagleton

There is peace in dungeons, but is that enough to make dungeons desirable? — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Our will is always for our own good, but we do not always see what that is; the people is never corrupted, but it is often deceived ... (Bk2:3) — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Remorse goes to sleep during a prosperous period and wakes up in adversity.
[Fr., Le remords s'endort durant un destin prospere et s'aigrit dans l'adversite.] — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Then what explains war among states? Rousseau's answer is really that war occurs because there is nothing to prevent it. — Kenneth Waltz

All roads from Rousseau lead to Sade. — Camille Paglia

Like Rousseau, Hegel appreciated quite early on that in modern commercial societies, individuals' desires and needs were generated by the desires and needs of others. Implanted by advertising, dictated by fashion, and determined by style, individual desire was always socially determined, shaped by the particular contexts in which we live. [..] Hence the need for greater comfort does not exactly arise within you directly; it is suggested to you by those who hope to make a profit from its creation. — Darrin M. McMahon

What conclusion is to be drawn from this paradox so worthy of being born in our time; and what will become of virtue when one has to get rich at all cost?
The ancient political thinkers forever spoke of morals and of virtue; ours speak only of commerce and money. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Everything is in constant flux on this earth. Nothing keeps the same unchanging shape, and our affections, being attached to things outside us, necessarily change and pass away as they do. Always out ahead of us or lagging behind, they recall a past which is gone or anticipate a future which may never come into being; there is nothing solid there for the heart to attach itself to. Thus our earthly joys are almost without exception the creatures of a moment ... — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The animals you eat are not those who devour others; you do not eat the carnivorous beasts, you take them as your pattern. You only hunger for the sweet and gentle creatures which harm no one, which follow you, serve you, and are devoured by you as the reward of their service. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau