In truth, laws are always useful to those with possessions and harmful to those who have nothing; from which it follows that the social state is advantageous to men only when all possess something and none has too much.
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAUTo renounce freedom is to renounce one’s humanity, one’s rights as a man and equally one’s duties.
More Jean-Jacques Rousseau Quotes
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Man’s first law is to watch over his own preservation; his first care he owes to himself; and as soon as he reaches the age of reason, he becomes the only judge of the best means to preserve himself; he becomes his own master.
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I would rather be a man of paradoxes than a man of prejudices.
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Civilization is a hopeless race to discover remedies for the evils it produces.
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I hate books; they only teach us to talk about things we know nothing about.
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Trust your heart rather than your head.
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Nature made me happy and good, and if I am otherwise, it is society’s fault.
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Every artists wants to be applauded
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The social pact, far from destroying natural equality, substitutes, on the contrary, a moral and lawful equality for whatever physical inequality that nature may have imposed on mankind; so that however unequal in strength and intelligence, men become equal by covenant and by right.
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He who pretends to look on death without fear lies. All men are afraid of dying, this is the great law of sentient beings, without which the entire human species would soon be destroyed.
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To renounce liberty is to renounce being a man, to surrender the rights of humanity and even its duties.
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Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.
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The people of England regards itself as free; but it is grossly mistaken; it is free only during the election of members of parliament. As soon as they are elected, slavery overtakes it, and it is nothing.
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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
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My love for imaginary objects and my facility in lending myself to them ended by disillusioning me with everything around me, and determined that love of solitude which I have retained ever since that time.
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All my misfortunes come of having thought too well of my fellows.
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The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless.
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Alas, it is when we are beginning to leave this mortal body that it most offends us!
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Or, rather, let us be more simple and less vain.
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It is a great evil for a Chief of a nation to be born the enemy of the freedom whose defender he should be.
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To be sane in a world of madman is in itself madness.
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To do is to be.
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The first man, who, after enclosing a piece of ground, took it into his head to say, This is mine, and found people simple enough to believe him, was the true founder of civil society.
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The imagination which causes so many ravages among us, never speaks to the heart of savages.
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There is no evildoer who could not be made good for something.
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I perceive God everywhere in His works. I sense Him in me; I see Him all around me.
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People who know little are usually great talkers, while men who know much say little.
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU