110+ Jean-Jacques Rousseau Quotes On Government, Human Nature And Education

Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a Swiss philosopher, writer, and composer of the 18th century. His philosophical works influenced the French Revolution and the development of modern political and educational thought. He is best known for his book, The Social Contract, which discussed the origin of civil society and proposed a new form of social organization based on the principles of freedom and equality. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Jean-Jacques Rousseau on government, human nature, education.

Top 10 Jean-Jacques Rousseau Quotes

1. There are always four sides to a story: your side, their side, the truth and what really happened.
2. People who know little are usually great talkers, while men who know much say little.
3. I am not made like any of those I have seen. I venture to believe that I am not made like any of those who are in existence. If I am not better, at least I am different.
4. The person who is slowest in making a promise is most faithful in its performance.
5. The person who has lived the most is not the one with the most years but the one with the richest experiences.
6. What wisdom can you find that is greater than kindness?
7. Insults are the arguments employed by those who are in the wrong.
8. Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains.
9. So great is human weakness, that we must reckon amongst virtuous actions abstention from the evils which we are tempted to commit.
10. Civilization is a hopeless race to discover remedies for the evils it produces.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau Image Quotes

Insults are the arguments employed by those who are in the wrong. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Civilization is a hopeless race to discover remedies for the evils it produces. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Every man has a right to risk his own life for the preservation of it. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Do not judge, and you will never be mistaken. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Jean-Jacques Rousseau Short Quotes

• Those that are most slow in making a promise are the most faithful in the performance of it.
• To be sane in a world of madman is in itself madness.
• Do not judge, and you will never be mistaken.
• The greatest braggarts are usually the biggest cowards.
• The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless.
• It is too difficult to think nobly when one thinks only of earning a living.
• Religious persecutors are not believers, they are rascals.
• Virtue is a state of war, and to live in it we have always to combat with ourselves.
• Happiness: a good bank account, a good cook, and a good digestion.
• Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau Quotes About Government

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

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

If there were a people consisting of gods, they would be governed democratically. So perfect a government is not suitable to men. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Frequent punishments are always a sign of weakness or laziness on the part of a government. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The problem is to find a form of association which will defend and protect with the whole common force the person and goods of each associate, and in which each, while uniting himself with all, may still obey himself alone, and remain as free as before. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

What, then, is the government? An intermediary body established between the subjects and the sovereign for their mutual communication, and charged with the execution of the laws and the maintenance of freedom, civil as well as political. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

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

Government originated in the attempt to find a form of association that defends and protects the person and property of each with the common force of all. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

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

The science of government is only a science of combinations, of applications, and of exceptions, according to times, places and circumstances. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Jean-Jacques Rousseau Quotes About Human Nature

To renounce liberty is to renounce being a man, to surrender the rights of humanity and even its duties. For he who renounces everything no indemnity is possible. Such a renunciation is incompatible with man's nature; to remove all liberty from his will is to remove all morality from his acts. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

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

Men, in general, are not this or that, they are what they are made to be. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Jean-Jacques Rousseau Quotes About Education

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

The falsification of history has done more to impede human development than any one thing known to mankind. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

We cannot teach children the danger of telling lies to men without realising, on the man's part, the danger of telling lies to children. A single untruth on the part of the master will destroy the results of his education. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

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

Do I dare set forth here the most important, the most useful rule of all education? It is not to save time, but to squander it. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

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

We can never put ourselves in the shoes of children; we cannot fathom their thoughts, we lend them ours; and always following ourown reasoning, we stuff their heads with extravagance and error. — 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

Jean-Jacques Rousseau Quotes About Democracy

In the strict sense of the term, a true democracy has never existed, and never will exist. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The general will is always right. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

If there were a nation of Gods, it would govern itself democratically. A government so perfect is not suited to men. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Jean-Jacques Rousseau Quotes About Childhood

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

Childhood is the sleep of reason. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Quit thy childhood, my friend, and wake up! — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Childhood is the sleep of reason. [Fr., L'enfance est le sommeil de la raison.] — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Nature wants children to be children before men... Childhood has its own seeing, thinking and feeling. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Childhood has it's own way of seeing, thinking, and feeling, and nothing is more foolish than to try to substitute ours for theirs. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Jean-Jacques Rousseau Quotes About Social Contract

The social pact, far from destroying natural equality, substitutes, on the contrary, a moral and lawful equality for whatever physical inequality that nature may have imposed on mankind; so that however unequal in strength and intelligence, men become equal by covenant and by right. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

...in respect of riches, no citizen shall ever be wealthy enough to buy another, and none poor enough to be forced to sell himself. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

In truth, laws are always useful to those with possessions and harmful to those who have nothing; from which it follows that the social state is advantageous to men only when all possess something and none has too much. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Every man having been born free and master of himself, no one else may under any pretext whatever subject him without his consent. To assert that the son of a slave is born a slave is to assert that he is not born a man. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

As soon as any man says of the affairs of the State "What does it matter to me?" the State may be given up for lost. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The strongest is never strong enough to be always the master, unless he transforms strength into right, and obedience into duty. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

One thinks himself the master of others, and still remains a greater slave than they. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

It is easier to conquer than to administer. With enough leverage, a finger could overturn the world; but to support the world, one must have the shoulders of Hercules. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

To renounce liberty is to renounce being a man, to surrender the rights of humanity and even its duties. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

War then, is a relation - not between man and man but between state and state and individuals are enemies only accidentally not as men, nor even as citizens but as soldiers not as members of their country, but as its defenders — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Jean-Jacques Rousseau Quotes About Society

All kinds of frankness and honesty are terrible crimes in the eyes of society. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The want of occupation is no less the plague of society than of solitude. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

People in their natural state are basically good. But this natural innocence,however, is corrupted by the evils of society. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

I think we cannot too strongly attack superstition, which is the disturber of society; nor too highly respect genuine religion, which is the support of it. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

It has always pleased me to read while eating if I have no companion; it gives me the society I lack. I devour alternately a page and a mouthful; it is as though my book were dining with me. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

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

Jean-Jacques Rousseau Quotes About Politics

I prefer liberty with danger than peace with slavery. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Those people who treat politics and morality separately will never understand either of them. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The political body, therefore, is also a moral being which has a will; and this general will, which tends always to the conservation and well-being of the whole and of each part of it ... is, for all members of the state ... the rule of what is just or unjust. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Jean-Jacques Rousseau Quotes About Nationalism

The English are predisposed to pride, the French to vanity. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Most nations, as well as people are impossible only in their youth; they become incorrigible as they grow older. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The French, for example, are a contemptible nation. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Jean-Jacques Rousseau Quotes About Life

Every man has a right to risk his own life for the preservation of it. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

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. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

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

The only moral lesson which is suited for a child--the most important lesson for every time of life--is this: 'Never hurt anybody. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

You are worried about seeing him spend his early years in doing nothing. What! Is it nothing to be happy? Nothing to skip, play and run around all day long? Never in his life will he be so busy again. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Every man has the right to risk his own life in order to save it. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

To live is not breathing it is action. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

That which renders life burdensome to us generally arises from the abuse of it. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

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? — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Girls must be thwarted early in life. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Jean-Jacques Rousseau Quotes About People

It is manifestly contrary to the law of nature, however defined, that a handful of people should gorge themselves with superfluities while the hungry majority goes in need of necessities. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

We have to have powder for our wigs; that is why so many poor people have no bread. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

I may not be better than other people, but at least I'm different. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

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

Universal silence is taken to imply the consent of the people. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

I hate books; they only teach people to talk about what they don't understand. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The English people think they are free; they are greatly deceived; they are free only during the election of members of Parliament. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

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

Usurpers always bring about or select troublous times to get passed, under cover of the public terror, destructive laws, which the people would never adopt in cold blood. The moment chosen is one of the surest means of distinguishing the work of the legislator from that of the tyrant. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The strength of the people is effective only if it is concentrated; it evaporates and is lost when it is dispersed, just as gunpowder scattered on the ground ignites only grain by grain. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Jean-Jacques Rousseau Quotes About Children

We should not teach children the sciences; but give them a taste for them. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The training of children is a profession, where we must know how to waste time in order to save it — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

A blue-stocking is the scourge of her husband, children, friends, servants, and every one. [Fr., Une femme bel-esprit est le fleau de son mari, de ses enfants, de ses amis, de ses valets, et tout le monde.] — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Although modesty is natural to man, it is not natural to children. Modesty only begins with the knowledge of evil. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

With children use force with men reason; such is the natural order of things. The wise man requires no law. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Do you not know...that a child badly taught is farther from being wise than one not taught at all? — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The apparent ease with which children learn is their ruin. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Jean-Jacques Rousseau Quotes About Freedom

There is no subjection so perfect as that which keeps the appearance of freedom. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

A country cannot subsist well without liberty, nor liberty without virtue. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Man is born free, yet he is everywhere in chains. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The money you have gives you freedom; the money you pursue enslaves you. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

I have never thought, for my part, that man's freedom consists in his being able to do whatever he wills, but that he should not, by any human power, be forced to do what is against his will. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Supreme happiness consists in self-content; that we may gain this self-content, we are placed upon this earth and endowed with freedom. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

I have never believed that man's freedom consisted in doing what he wants, but rather in never doing what he does not want to do. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Freedom is the power to choose our own chains — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The English think they are free. They are free only during the election of members of parliament. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Free people, remember this maxim: We may acquire liberty, but it is never recovered if it is once lost. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Jean-Jacques Rousseau Quotes About True

I have always said and felt that true enjoyment can not be described. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Peter had a genius for imitation; but he lacked true genius, which is creative and makes all from nothing. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

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

Whoever blushes confesses guilt, true innocence never feels shame. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

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

Christ preaches only servitude and dependence... True Christians are made to be slaves. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Jean-Jacques Rousseau Famous Quotes And Sayings

Insults are the arguments employed by those who are in the wrong. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Civilization is a hopeless race to discover remedies for the evils it produces. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Every man has a right to risk his own life for the preservation of it. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

It is unnatural for a majority to rule, for a majority can seldom be organized and united for specific action, and a minority can. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

To write a good love letter, you ought to begin without knowing what you mean to say, and to finish without knowing what you have written. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The world is the book of women. Whatever knowledge they may possess is more commonly acquired by observation than by reading. — 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

Trust your heart rather than your head. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Absolute silence leads to sadness. It is the image of death. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Heroes are not known by the loftiness of their carriage; the greatest braggarts are generally the merest cowards. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Our affections as well as our bodies are in perpetual flux. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

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

Slaves lose everything in their chains, even the desire of escaping from them. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Adversity is a great teacher, but this teacher makes us pay dearly for its instruction; and often the profit we derive, is not worth the price we paid. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

You forget that the fruits belong to all and that the land belongs to no one. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

For, as I think I have said, I can only meditate when I am walking. When I stop I cease to think; my mind only works with my legs. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Force does not constitute right... obedience is due only to legitimate powers. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The majesty of the Scriptures strikes me with admiration, as the purity of the gospel has its influence on my heart. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

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

A feeble body weakens the mind. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

All of my misfortunes come from having thought too well of my fellows. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Gratitude is a duty which ought to be paid, but which none have a right to expect. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Ah, that is a perfume in which I delight; when they roast coffee near my house, I hasten to open the door to take in all the aroma. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The truths of the Scriptures are so marked and inimitable, that the inventor would be more of a miraculous character than the hero. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Falsehood has an infinity of combinations, but truth has only one mode of being. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Money is the seed of money, and the first guinea is sometimes more difficult to acquire than the second million. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Nature never deceives us; it is we who deceive ourselves. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

I have suffered too much in this world not to hope for another. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Abstaining so as really to enjoy, is the epicurism, the very perfection, of reason. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Endurance and to be able to endure is the first lesson a child should learn because it's the one they will most need to know. — 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

The English people believes itself to be free; it is gravely mistaken; it is free only during election of members of parliament; as soon as the members are elected, the people is enslaved; it is nothing. In the brief moment of its freedom, the English people makes such a use of that freedom that it deserves to lose it. — 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

God made me and broke the mold. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Good laws lead to the making of better ones; bad ones bring about worse. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

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. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

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

Temperance and labor are the two best physicians of man; labor sharpens the appetite, and temperance prevents from indulging to excess — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Take the course opposite to custom and you will almost always do well. — 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

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

We pity in others only the those evils which we ourselves have experienced. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Being wealthy isn't just a question of having lots of money. It's a question of what we want. Wealth isn't an absolute, it's relative to desire. Every time we seek something that we can't afford, we can be counted as poor, how much money we may actually have. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Our greatest evils flow from ourselves. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

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

It is not the criminal things that are hardest to confess, but the ridiculous and the shameful. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

When my reason is afloat, my faith cannot long remain in suspense, and I believe in God as firmly as in any other truth whatever; in short, a thousand motives draw me to the consolatory side, and add the weight of hope to the equilibrium of reason. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Teach by doing whenever you can, and only fall back upon words when doing it is out of the question. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Remorse sleeps during prosperity but awakes bitter consciousness during adversity. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Life Lessons by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

1. Jean-Jacques Rousseau believed that humans are essentially good and should be free to develop their own moral compass. He argued that the best way to achieve this was to create a society that was based on the principles of freedom, equality, and justice.
2. Rousseau also argued that humans should strive to be true to their own nature, and that they should be able to develop their own passions and interests without the interference of others.
3. Rousseau's philosophy encourages us to be honest with ourselves, to think for ourselves, and to live in harmony with others. He teaches us to be mindful of our own needs and to respect the needs of others.