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.
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAUI would rather be a man of paradoxes than a man of prejudices.
More Jean-Jacques Rousseau Quotes
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He who blushes is already guilty.
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Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains. Those who think themselves the masters of others are indeed greater slaves than they.
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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.
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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.
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Every person has a right to risk their own life for the preservation of it.
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Civilization is a hopeless race to discover remedies for the evils it produces.
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If we assume man has been corrupted by an artificial civilization, what is the natural state? the state of nature from which he has been removed? imagine, wandering up and down the forest without industry, without speech, and without home.
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I have never thought, for my part, that man’s freedom consists in his being able to do whatever he wills, but that he should not, by any human power, be forced to do what is against his will.
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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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If there is in this world a well-attested account, it is that of vampires. Nothing is lacking: official reports, affidavits of well-known people, of surgeons, of priests, of magistrates; the judicial proof is most complete. And with all that, who is there who believes in vampires?
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I would rather be a man of paradoxes than a man of prejudices.
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I feel an indescribable ecstasy and delirium in melting, as it were, into the system of being, in identifying myself with the whole of nature..
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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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I am a hundred times happier in my solitude than I could be if I lived among them.
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What, then, is the government? An intermediary body established between the subjects and the sovereign for their mutual communication, a body charged with the execution of the laws and the maintenance of freedom, both civil and political.
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To do is to be.
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MAN is born free; and everywhere he is in chains. One thinks himself the master of others, and still remains a greater slave than they.
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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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All my misfortunes come of having thought too well of my fellows.
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A taste for ostentation is rarely associated in the same souls with a taste for honesty.
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If force compels obedience, there is no need to invoke a duty to obey, and if force ceases to compel obedience, there is no longer any obligation.
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I feel an indescribable ecstasy and delirium in melting, as it were, into the system of being, in identifying myself with the whole of nature.
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There are times when I am so unlike myself that I might be taken for someone else of an entirely opposite character.
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What good is it looking for our happiness in the opinion of others if we can find it in ourselves?
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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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In any real democracy, magistracy isn’t a benefit—it’s a burdensome responsibility that can’t fairly be imposed on one individual rather than another.
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU