Top 400 Jean-Jacques Rousseau Quotes (2025 Update)
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251. “But in some great souls, who consider themselves as citizens of the world, and forcing the imaginary barriers that separate people from people...”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

252. “To live is not to breathe but to act.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

253. “Religious persecutors are not believers, they are rascals.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

254. “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.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

255. “There exists one book, which, to my taste, furnishes the happiest treatise of natural education. What then is this marvelous book? Is it Aristotle? Is it Pliny, is it Buffon? No-it is Robinson Crusoe.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

256. “Since these conveniences by becoming habitual had almost entirely ceased to be enjoyable, and at the same time degenerated into true needs, it became much more cruel to be deprived of them than to possess them was sweet, and men were unhappy to lose them without being happy to possess them.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

257. “The English are predisposed to pride, the French to vanity.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

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

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

259. “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.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

260. “I have suffered too much in this world not to hope for another.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

261. “Girls must be thwarted early in life.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

262. “But remain the teacher of the young teachers. Advise and direct us, and we will be ready to learn. I will have need of you as long as I live.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

263. “We must powder our wigs; that is why so many poor people have no bread.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

264. “Fame is but the breath of people, and that often unwholesome.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

265. “One must choose between making a man or a citizen, for one cannot make both at the same time.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

266. “Anticipation and Hope are born twins.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

267. “Social man lives always outside himself; he knows how to live only in the opinion of others, it is, so to speak, from their judgement alone that he derives the sense of his own existence.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

268. “Each member of the community gives himself to it at the instant of its constitution, just as he actually is, himself and all his forces, including all goods in his possession.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

269. “At length I recollected the thoughtless saying of a great princess, who, on being informed that the country people had no bread, replied, “Let them eat cake”.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

270. “Sacrifice life to truth.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

271. “The tone of good conversation is brilliant and natural; it is neither tedious nor frivolous; it is instructive without pedantry, gay without tumultuousness, polished without affectation, gallant without insipidity, waggish without equivocation.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

272. “From the first moment of life, men ought to begin learning to deserve to live; and, as at the instant of birth we partake of the rights of citizenship, that instant ought to be the beginning of the exercise of our duty.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

273. “The more humanity owes him, the more society denies him. Every door is shut against him, even when he has a right to its being opened: and if he ever obtains justice, it is with much greater difficulty than others obtain favors.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

274. “My birth was my first misfortune.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

275. “True genius is creative and makes all from nothing.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

276. “How have a hundred men who wish for a master the right to vote on behalf of ten who do not? The law of majority voting is itself something established by convention, and presupposes unanimity, on one occasion at least. 6.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

277. “Definitions would be good things if we did not use words to make them.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

278. “If I am part of a group of 100 people, do 99 people have the right to sentence me to death, just because they are majority?”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

279. “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

280. “Love, known to the person by whom it is inspired, becomes more bearable.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

281. “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.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

282. “Those who think themselves the masters of others are indeed greater slaves than they.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

283. “In any case, frequent punishments are a sign of weakness or slackness in the government. There is no man so bad that he cannot be made good for something. No man should be put to death, even as an example, if he can be left to live without danger to society.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

284. “Frequent punishments are always a sign of weakness or laziness on the part of a government.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

285. “The people is never corrupted, but it is often deceived...”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

286. “The continual emotion that is felt in the theater excites us, enervates us, enfeebles us, and makes us less able to resist our passions. And the sterile interest taken in virtue serves only to satisfy our vanity without obliging us to practice it.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

287. “There is nothing better than the encouragement of a good friend.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

288. “In the North the first words are, Help me; in the South, Love me.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

289. “The majesty of the Scriptures strikes me with admiration, as the purity of the gospel has its influence on my heart.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

290. “The infant, on opening his eyes, ought to see his country, and to the hour of his death never lose sight of it.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

291. “Innocence is ashamed of nothing.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

292. “What good would it be to possess the whole universe if one were its only survivor?”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

293. “The abuse of books kills science. Believing that we know what we have read, we believe that we can dispense with learning it.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

294. “To study men, we must look close by; to study man, we must learn to look afar; if we are to discover essential characteristics, we must first observe differences.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

295. “My passions, when roused, are intense, and, so long as I am activated by them, nothing equals my impetuosity. I no longer know moderation, respect, fear, propriety; I am cynical, brazen, violent, fearless; no sense of shame deters me, no danger alarms me. Except for the object of my passion, the whole world is as nothing to me; but this only lasts for a moment, and the next I am plunged into utter dejection.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

296. “I will explain myself; but this will be to take the most useless, most superfluous precaution; for everything that I will tell you could only be understood by those who do not need to be told.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

297. “A man who is not a fool can rid himself of every folly except vanity.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

298. “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.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

299. “The opportunity of making happy is more scarce than we imagine; the punishment of missing it is, never to meet with it again; and the use we make of it leaves us an eternal sentiment of satisfaction or repentance.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

300. “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