Quotes from Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Nature never deceives us; it is we who deceive ourselves.

One loses all the time which he might employ to better purpose.

Our affections as well as our bodies are in perpetual flux.

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

There is no subjugation so perfect as that which keeps the appearance of freedom for in that way one captures volition itself.

I prefer liberty with danger than peace with slavery.

Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.

I would rather be a man of paradoxes than a man of prejudices.

It is too difficult to think nobly when one thinks only of earning a living.

To be sane in a world of madman is in itself madness.

Why should we build our happiness on the opinons of others, when we can find it in our own hearts?

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

Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains. Those who think themselves the masters of others are indeed greater slaves than they.

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.

All my misfortunes come of having thought too well of my fellows.

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.

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

There are times when I am so unlike myself that I might be taken for someone else of an entirely opposite character.

To live is not to breathe but to act. It is to make use of our organs, our senses, our faculties, of all the parts of ourselves which give us the sentiment of our existence. The man who has lived the most is not he who has counted the most years but he who has most felt life.

I hate books; they only teach us to talk about things we know nothing about.

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

No one is happy unless he respects himself.

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

The one thing we do not know is the limit of the knowable.