Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The extreme inequality of our ways of life, the excess of idleness among some and the excess of toil among others, the ease of stimulating and gratifying our appetites and senses, the over-elaborate foods of the rich, which inflame and overwhelm them with indigestion, the bad food of the poor which they often go without altogether, so that they over-eat greedily when they have the opportunity; those late nights, excesses of all kinds, immoderate transports of every passion, fatigue, exhaustion of the mind, the innumerable sorrows and anxiety that people in society give themselves, the persecutions suffered by many to lead a life of pleasure, all these are fatal proofs that the majority of our ills are of our own making, and that we might have avoided them all by following the simple, unchanging laws of nature.

It is pity that, in general, takes the place of reason in the mind of a child.

Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.

I have entered on an enterprise which is without precedent, and will have no imitator. I propose to show my fellows a man as nature made him, and this man shall be myself.

Remorse sleeps during a prosperous period but wakes up in adversity.

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

The right of conquest has no foundation other than the right of the strongest.

Liberty is obedience to the law which one has imposed upon oneself.

The general will is always right and tends to the public advantage.

To renounce liberty is to renounce being a man.

The body politic, like the human body, begins to die from its birth, and bears in itself the causes of its destruction.

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

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.

The education of women should always be relative to that of men. They should be taught to please them.

A child is not a man or a woman but an animal.

Childhood is not merely innocence; prejudice is its essence.

The world of imagination is the world of eternity.

At the bottom of my heart I feel that I am capable of great things.

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 there is a single being in the universe who has the right to complain, it is certainly I.