Quotes from Jean-Jacques Rousseau

I do not know is a phrase which becomes us.

To endure is the first thing that a child ought to learn, and that which he will have the most need to know.

Laws are always useful to those who possess and vexatious to those who have nothing.

Force does not constitute right... obedience is due only to legitimate powers.

I may be no better, but at least I am different.

We should not teach children the sciences; but give them a taste for them.

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

The abuse of books kills science. Believing that we know what we have read, we believe that we can dispense with learning it.

The science of government is only a science of combinations, of applications, and of exceptions, according to times, places and circumstances.

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

All kinds of frankness and honesty are terrible crimes in the eyes of society.

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

Every man has a right to risk his own life for the preservation of it.

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.

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

That which renders life burdensome to us generally arises from the abuse of it.

The English are predisposed to pride, the French to vanity.

Everything is good as it comes from the hands of the Maker of the world, but degenerates once it gets into the hands of man

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.

Men, in general, are not this or that, they are what they are made to be.

The want of occupation is no less the plague of society than of solitude.

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?

Heroes are not known by the loftiness of their carriage; the greatest braggarts are generally the merest cowards.

One may live tranquilly in a dungeon; but does life consist in living quietly?