Jean-Jacques Rousseau

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

Everything is good as it leaves the hands of the Author of things; everything degenerates in the hands of man. He forces one soil to nourish the products of another, one tree to bear the fruit of another. He mixes and confuses the climates, the elements, the seasons. He mutilates his dog, his horse, his slave. He turns everything upside down; he disfigures everything; he loves deformity, monsters. He wants nothing as nature made it, not even man; for him, man must be trained like a school horse; man must be fashioned in keeping with his fancy like a tree in his garden.

I am commencing an undertaking, hitherto without precedent, and which will never find an imitator. I desire to set before my fellows the likeness of a man in all the truth of nature, and that man myself.

If we take the term in the strict sense, there never has been a real democracy, and there never will be. It is against the natural order for the many to govern and the few to be governed. It is unimaginable that the people should remain continually assembled to devote their time to public affairs, and it is clear that they cannot set up commissions for that purpose without the form of administration being changed.

L’homme est né libre, et partout il est dans les fers .

Youth is the time to study wisdom; old age is the time to practice it.

As long as there are rich people in the world, they will be desirous of distinguishing themselves from the poor.

Truth is no road to fortune.

Each State can have for enemies only other States, and not men; for between things disparate in nature there can be no real relation.

What man loses by the social contract is his natural liberty and an unlimited right to everything he tries to get and succeeds in getting; what he gains is civil liberty and the proprietorship of all he possesses.

An absolute silence leads to sadness: it is the image of death.

Coercion created slavery, the cowardice of the slaves perpetuated it.

Slaves lose everything in their chains, even the desire of escaping from them.

If you have but a single ruler, you lie at the discretion of a master who has no reason to love you: and if you have several, you must bear at once their tyranny and their divisions.

Posterity is always just.

The first of all laws is to respect the laws: the severity of penalties is only a vain resource, invented by little minds in order to substitute terror for that respect which they have no means of obtaining.

As soon as public service ceases to be the chief business of the citizens, and they would rather serve with their money than with their persons, the State is not far from its fall.

Never exceed your rights, and they will soon become unlimited.

Politeness requires this thing; decorum that; ceremony has its forms, and fashion its laws, and these we must always follow, never the promptings of our own nature.

It should be remembered that the foundation of the social contract is property; and its first condition, that every one should be maintained in the peaceful possession of what belongs to him.

The first man to fence in a piece of land, saying “This is mine,’’ and who found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society.

Every artist loves applause. The praise of his contemporaries is the most valuable part of his recompense.

The more humanity owes him [the poor man], 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 favours.

Do we wish men to be virtuous? Then let us begin by making them love their country.

The less reasonable a cult is, the more men seek to establish it by force.

Do not base your life on the judgments of others; first, because they are as likely to be mistaken as you are, and further, because you cannot know that they are telling you their true thoughts.

To reign by opinion, begin by trampling it under your feet.

Old men grasp more at life than babies, and leave it with a much worse grace than young people. It is because all their labours having been for this life, they perceive at last their trouble lost.

Nature’s instructions are always slow, those of men are generally premature.

They must know but little of mankind who can imagine that, after they have been once seduced by luxury, they can ever renounce it.

Luxury either comes of riches or makes them necessary; it corrupts at once rich and poor, the rich by possession and the poor by covetousness.

Hatred, as well as love, renders its votaries credulous.

The man who has lived the longest is not he who has spent the greatest number of years, but he who has had the greatest sensibility of life.

From the first moment of life, men ought to begin learning to deserve to live.

Good laws lead to the making of better ones; bad ones bring about worse.

Do not judge, and you will never be mistaken.

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

General and abstract ideas are the source of the greatest errors of mankind.

The body politic, as well as the human body, begins to die as soon as it is born, and carries in itself the causes of its destruction.

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

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

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