EliteED > EliteED's Quotes

“Or, rather, let us be more simple and less vain.”
― Rousseau Jean-Jacques

“The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.”
― Socrates

“What wisdom can you find greater than kindness.”
― Jean Jacques Rousseau

“I know the feelings of my heart, and I know men. I am not made like any of those I have seen; I venture to believe that I am not made like any of those who are in existence. If I am not better, at least I am different. Whether Nature has acted rightly or wrongly in destroying the mould in which she cast me, can only be decided after I have been read.”
― Jean Jacques Rousseau, Confessions

“Trust your heart rather than your head.”
― Jean Jacques Rousseau

“God (Nature, in my view) makes all things good; man meddles with them and they become evil. He fores one soil to yield the products of another, one tree to bear another's fruit. He confuses and confounds time, place, and natural conditions. He mutilates his dog, his horse, and his slave. He destroys and defaces all things; he loves all that is deformed and monstrous; he will have nothing as nature made it, not even himself, who must learn his paces like a saddle-horse, and be shaped to his master's taste like the trees in his garden.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau

“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”
― Jean-Jaques Rousseau

“Civilization is a hopeless race to discover remedies for the evils it produces.”
― Rousseau

“Never have I thought so much, never have I realised my own existence so much, been so much alive, been so much myself ... as in those journeys which I have made alone and afoot. Walking has something in it which animates and heightens my ideas: I can scarcely think when I stay in one place ; my body must be set a-going if my mind is to work. The sight of the country, the succession of beautiful scenes ... releases my soul, gives me greater courage of thought, throws me as it were into the midst of the immensity of the objects of Nature ... my heart, surveying one object after another, unites itself, identifies itself with those in sympathy with it, surrounds itself with delightful images, intoxicates itself with emotions the most exquisite.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Confessions

“Why should we build our happiness on the opinons of others, when we can find it in our own hearts?”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract and Discourses

“Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau

“Entirely taken up by the present, I could remember nothing; I had no distinct notion of myself as a person, nor had I the least idea of what had just happened to me. I did not know who I was, nor where I was; I felt neither pain, fear, nor anxiety. I watched my blood flowing as I might have watched a stream, without even thinking that the blood had anything to do with me. I felt throughout my whole being such a wonderful calm, that whenever I recall this feeling I can find nothing to compare with it in all the pleasures that stir our lives.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Reveries of the Solitary Walker

“I perceive God everywhere in His works. I sense Him in me; I see Him all around me.”
― Rousseau Jean - Jacques

“When one has suffered or fears suffering, one pities those who suffer; but when one is suffering, one pities only oneself.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile, or On Education

“There are times when I am so unlike myself that I might be taken for someone else of an entirely opposite character.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Confessions

“Real wisdom is not the knowledge of everything, but the knowledge of which things in life are necessary, which are less necessary, and which are completely unnecessary to know. Among the most necessary knowledge is the knowledge of how to live well, that is, how to produce the least possible evil and the greatest goodness in one’s life. At present, people study useless sciences, but forget to study this, the most important knowledge.”
― Jean Jaques Rousseau

“I prefer liberty with danger than peace with slavery.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau

“The "sociable" man, always outside himself, is capable of living only in the opinions of others and, so to speak, derives the sentiment of his own existence solely from their judgment.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau

“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. From how many crimes, wars and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows, "Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin of Inequality

“Inter faeces et urinam nascimur. (We are born between shit and piss.)”
― St. Augustine of Hippo

“The sword wears out its sheath, as it is sometimes said. That is my story. My passions have made me live, and my passions have killed me. What passions, it may be asked. Trifles, the most childish things in the world. Yet they affected me as much as if the possessions of Helen, or the throne of the Universe, had been at stake.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Confessions

“Nature made me happy and good, and if I am otherwise, it is society's fault.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile, or On Education

“What good would it be to possess the whole universe if one were its only survivor?”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau, A Lasting Peace Through the Federation of Europe and the State of War

“Our wisdom is slavish prejudice, our customs consist in control,
constraint, compulsion. Civilised man is born and dies a slave.
The infant is bound up in swaddling clothes, the corpse is nailed
down in his coffin. All his life long man is imprisoned by our
institutions.”
― Jean Jacques Rousseau

“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.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile, or On Education

“Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“Teach your scholar to observe the phenomena of nature; you will soon rouse his curiosity, but if you would have it grow, do not be in too great a hurry to satisfy this curiosity. Put the problems before him and let him solve them himself. Let him know nothing because you have told him, but because he has learnt it for himself. Let him not be taught science, let him discover it. If ever you substitute authority for reason he will cease to reason; he will be a mere plaything of other people's thoughts.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau

“It is as if my heart and my brain did not belong to the same person. Feelings come quicker than lightning and fill my soul, but they bring me no illumination; they burn me and dazzle me.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Confessions

“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)”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract

“It is too difficult to think nobly when one thinks only of earning a living.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau , Confessions