Top 400 Jean-Jacques Rousseau Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “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

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

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

103. “In the strict sense of the term, a true democracy has never existed, and never will exist.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

104. “There is no subjection so perfect as that which keeps the appearance of freedom.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

105. “Whence do I get my rules of conduct? I find them in my heart. Whatever I feel to be good is good. Whatever I feel to be evil is evil. Conscience is the best of casuists.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

106. “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

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

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

108. “Money is the seed of money, and the first guinea is sometimes more difficult to acquire than the second million.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

109. “The want of occupation is no less the plague of society than of solitude.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

110. “If there wasn’t a God we would have to invent one to keep people sane.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

111. “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.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

112. “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.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

113. “The thirst after happiness is never extinguished in the heart of man.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

114. “There is a period in life when we go backwards as we advance.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

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

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

116. “It is by the activity of our passions, that our reason improves: we covet knowledge merely because we covet enjoyment, and it is impossible to conceive why a man exempt from fears and desires should take the trouble to reason.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

117. “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

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

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

119. “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.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

120. “Remorse sleeps during prosperity but awakes bitter consciousness during adversity.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

121. “For it is in our nature to endure patiently the decrees of fate, but not the ill-will of others.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

122. “The bigger a state becomes the more liberty diminishes.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

123. “Not all the subtilties of metaphysics can make me doubt a moment of the immortality of the soul, and of a beneficent Providence. I feel it, I believe it, I desire it, I hope it, and will defend it to my last breath.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

124. “An honest man nearly always thinks justly.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

125. “He who eats in idleness that which he himself has not earned, steals it; and a capitalist whom the state pays for doing nothing differs little in my eyes from a brigand, who lives at the expense of passers-by.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

126. “Laws are always useful to those who possess and vexatious to those who have nothing.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

127. “Supreme happiness consists in self-content.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

128. “He who pretends to look on death without fear lies. All men are afraid of dying, this is the great law of sentient beings, without which the entire human species would soon be destroyed.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

129. “Abstaining so as really to enjoy, is the epicurism, the very perfection, of reason.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

130. “Temperance and labor are the two real physicians of man.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

131. “People who know little are usually great talkers, while men who know much say little. It is plain than 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

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

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

133. “The most absolute authority is that which penetrates into a man’s innermost being and concerns itself no less with his will than with his actions.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

134. “Gracefulness cannot subsist without ease; delicacy is not debility; nor must a woman be sick in order to please. Infirmity, and sickness may excite our pity, but desire and pleasure require the bloom and vigor of health.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

135. “The visible order of the universe proclaims a supreme intelligence.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

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

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

137. “The mind grows narrow in proportion as the soul grows corrupt.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

138. “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.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

139. “Inopportune consolations increase a deep sorrow.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

140. “One may live tranquilly in a dungeon; but does life consist in living quietly?”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

141. “To be driven by our appetites alone is slavery, while to obey a law that we have imposed on ourselves is freedom.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

142. “He who has the base necessities of life should pay nothing; taxation on him who has a surplus may, if need be; extend to everything beyond necessities.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

143. “A man speaks of what he knows, a woman of what pleases her: the one requires knowledge, the other taste.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

144. “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 multitude of crimes is a gaurantee of impunity.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

145. “It is not possible for minds degraded by a host of trivial concerns to ever rise to anything great.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

146. “Every artists wants to be applauded.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

147. “Consolation indiscreetly pressed upon us, when we are suffering undue affliction, only serves to increase our pain, and to render our grief more poignant.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

148. “Remorse sleeps in the atmosphere of prosperity.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

149. “It is hard to prevent oneself from believing what one so keenly desires.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

150. “I cannot repeat too often that to control the child one must often control oneself.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau