Jean–Jacques Rousseau

Nature never deceives us; it is we who deceive ourselves.

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

Happiness: a good bank account, a good cook, and a good digestion.

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

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.

Free people, remember this maxim: we may acquire liberty, but it is never recovered if it is once lost.

Childhood is the sleep of reason.

No man has any natural authority over his fellow men.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

Base souls have no faith in great individuals.

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.

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

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

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

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

I only see clearly what I remember.

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

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

Plant and your spouse plants with you; weed and you weed alone.

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.

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 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.

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

Every man has the right to risk his own life in order to preserve it. Has it ever been said that a man who throws himself out the window to escape from a fire is guilty of suicide?

A feeble body weakens the mind.

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

Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.

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

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.

No true believer could be intolerant or a persecutor. If I were a magistrate and the law carried the death penalty against atheists, I would begin by sending to the stake whoever denounced another.

The English think they are free. They are free only during the election of members of parliament.

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

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

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

Our will is always for our own good, but we do not always see what that is.

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

God made me and broke the mold.

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

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

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

Virtue is a state of war, and to live in it we have always to combat with ourselves.

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

What wisdom can you find that is greater than kindness?

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

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

Remorse sleeps during prosperity but awakes bitter consciousness during adversity.

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

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

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

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

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

Our greatest evils flow from ourselves.

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

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

Religious persecutors are not believers, they are rascals.