Top 69 Quotes by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

I have resolved on an enterprise that has no precedent and will have no imitator. I want to set before my fellow human beings a man in every way true to nature; and that man will be myself.

No true believer could be intolerant or a persecutor. If I were a magistrate and the law carried the death penalty against atheists, I would begin by sending to the stake whoever denounced another.

We pity in others only the those evils which we ourselves have experienced.

People who know little are usually great talkers, while men who know much say little.

Whoever blushes is already guilty; true innocence is ashamed of nothing.

The English think they are free. They are free only during the election of members of parliament.

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

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

When something an affliction happens to you, you either let it defeat you, or you defeat it.

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