What good would it be to possess the whole universe if one were its only survivor?
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAUMan’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.
More Jean-Jacques Rousseau Quotes
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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..
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.
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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 am a hundred times happier in my solitude than I could be if I lived among them.
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU -
There is no evildoer who could not be made good for something.
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU -
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 prefer liberty with danger than peace with slavery.
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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 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.
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU -
Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU -
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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What wisdom can you find greater than kindness.
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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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Alas, it is when we are beginning to leave this mortal body that it most offends us!
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A taste for ostentation is rarely associated in the same souls with a taste for honesty.
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU