Quotes from Jean-Jacques Rousseau

To renounce freedom is to renounce one's humanity, one's rights as a man and equally one's duties.

Virtue is a state of war, and to live in it we have always to combat with ourselves.

There is peace in dungeons, but is that enough to make dungeons desirable?

Liberty may be gained, but can never be recovered. (Bk2:8)

there is no real advance in human reason, for what we gain in one direction we lose in another; for all minds start from the same point, and as the time spent in learning what others have thought is so much time lost in learning to think for ourselves, we have more acquired knowledge and less vigor of mind. Our minds like our arms are accustomed to use tools for everything, and to do nothing for themselves.

The more ingenious our apparatus, the coarser and more unskillful are our senses.

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

Our will is always for our own good, but we do not always see what that is; the people is never corrupted, but it is often deceived... (Bk2:3)

It is hard to prevent oneself from believing what one so keenly desires, and who can doubt that the interest we have in admitting or denying the reality of the Judgement to come determines the faith of most men in accordance with their hopes and fears.

Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains. One man thinks himself the master of others, but remains more of a slave than they are. -

Peoples once accustomed to masters are not in a condition to do without them. If they attempt to shake off the yoke, they still more estrange themselves from freedom, as, by mistaking for it an unbridled license to which it is diametrically opposed, they nearly always manage, by their revolutions, to hand themselves over to seducers, who only make their chains heavier than before.

When the people shall have nothing more to eat, they will eat the rich.

The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying 'this is mine', and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society.

Man is born free, but is everywhere in chains.

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.

Since men cannot create new forces, but merely combine and control those which already exist, the only way in which they can preserve themselves is by uniting their separate powers in a combination strong enough to overcome any resistance, uniting them so that their powers are directed by a single motive and act in concert.

Man's first law is to watch over his own preservation; his first care he owes to himself; and as soon as he reaches the age of reason, he becomes the only judge of the best means to preserve himself; he becomes his own master.

He who blushes is already guilty.

My love for imaginary objects and my facility in lending myself to them ended by disillusioning me with everything around me, and determined that love of solitude which I have retained ever since that time.

If force compels obedience, there is no need to invoke a duty to obey, and if force ceases to compel obedience, there is no longer any obligation.

Finance is a slave's word.

When one has suffered or fears suffering, one pities those who suffer; but when one is suffering, one pities only oneself.

As long as we desire, we can do without happiness: we expect to achieve it. If happiness fails to come, hope persists, and the charm of illusion lasts as long as the passion that causes it. So this condition is sufficient in itself, and the anxiety it inflicts is a sort of enjoyment that compensates for reality… Woe to him who has nothing left to desire… We enjoy less what we obtain than what we hope for, and we are happy only before being happy.

However great a man's natural talent may be, the act of writing cannot be learned all at once.