He was a Swiss-born philosopher, political theorist, author, and composer. He is considered one of the greatest figures of the French Enlightenment. Rousseau was one of the first modern writers to seriously attack the institution of private property. He is considered a forebear of modern socialism and Communism. Rousseau also questioned the assumption that the will of the majority is always correct. He argued that the goal of government should be to secure freedom, equality, and justice for all within the state, regardless of the will of the majority. His great ideas regarding education have profoundly influenced modern educational theory.
He minimizes the importance of book learning and recommends that a child’s emotions should be educated before his reason. He placed a special emphasis on learning by experience.
(1712 – 1778)
– Jean-Jacques Rousseau Quotes –
It is unnatural for a majority to rule, for a majority can seldom be organized and united for specific action, and a minority can.
~ 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.
~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau
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.
~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau
We do not know what is really good or bad fortune.
~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Every man has the right to risk his own life in order to preserve it. Has it ever been said that a man who throws himself out the window to escape from a fire is guilty of suicide?
~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Heroes are not known by the loftiness of their carriage; the greatest braggarts are generally the merest cowards.
~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau
No man has any natural authority over his fellow men.
~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Plant and your spouse plants with you; weed and you weed alone.
~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Ordinary readers, forgive my paradoxes: one must make them when one reflects; and whatever you may say, I prefer being a man with paradoxes than a man with prejudices.
~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau
The body politic, as well as the human body, begins to die as soon as it is born, and carries itself the causes of its destruction.
~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau
You forget that the fruits belong to all and that the land belongs to no one.
~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Reading, solitude, idleness, a soft and sedentary life, intercourse with women and young people, these are perilous paths for a young man, and these lead him constantly into danger.
~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau
I undertake the same project as Montaigne, but with an aim contrary to his own: for he wrote his Essays only for others, and I write my reveries only for myself.
~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Falsehood has an infinity of combinations, but truth has only one mode of being.
~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Nature never deceives us; it is we who deceive ourselves.
~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau
People who know little are usually great talkers, while men who know much say little.
~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Most nations, as well as people are impossible only in their youth; they become incorrigible as they grow older.
~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Our will is always for our own good, but we do not always see what that is.
~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Money is the seed of money, and the first guinea is sometimes more difficult to acquire than the second million.
~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Insults are the arguments employed by those who are in the wrong.
~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Do I dare set forth here the most important, the most useful rule of all education? It is not to save time, but to squander it.
~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Although modesty is natural to man, it is not natural to children.
~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Free people, remember this maxim: we may acquire liberty, but it is never recovered if it is once lost.
~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Modesty only begins with the knowledge of evil.
~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Happiness: a good bank account, a good cook, and a good digestion.
~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.
~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau
The English think they are free. They are free only during the election of members of parliament.
~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau
We are born, so to speak, twice over; born into existence, and born into life; born a human being, and born a man.
~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau
