Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Social contract, inspired French Revolution
Quotes by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
The music of the savage is the only one that can move us.
Society is based on acquirements; the savage life is based on sentiments.
The general will is always upright and always tends to the public advantage.
The English people believes itself to be free; it is gravely mistaken; it is free only during the election of members of Parliament; as soon as the members are elected, the people is enslaved; it is nothing.
Nature has made me happy and good, and if I am otherwise, it is society's fault.
Everything is good as it comes from the hands of the Author of Nature; but everything degenerates in the hands of man.
We are born weak, we need strength; we are born wholly unprovided, we need aid; we are born stupid, we need judgment. Everything we do not have at our birth, and which we need when grown, is given us by education.
The greatest good is not authority but liberty.
Conscience! Conscience! Divine instinct, immortal voice from heaven; sure guide of a being ignorant and finite, but intelligent and free; infallible judge of good and evil, which makes man like unto God!
To live is not to breathe, it is to act.
The body politic, like the human body, begins to die from its birth, and carries in itself the causes of its destruction.
The progress of the sciences and arts has added nothing to our true happiness.
What wisdom can you find that is greater than kindness?
It is not enough to do good; one must do it in the right way.
The most dangerous of all enterprises is to make a man honest.
I hate books; they only teach us to talk about things we know nothing about.
The love of humanity is nothing other than the love of justice.
To be independent of public opinion is the first step towards virtue.
The strongest is never strong enough to be always master, unless he transforms strength into right, and obedience into duty.
The social compact establishes among the citizens an equality of such a kind, that they all engage themselves under the same conditions, and ought all to enjoy the same rights.