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.
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAUTo write a good love letter, you ought to begin without knowing what you mean to say, and to finish without knowing what you have written.
More Jean-Jacques Rousseau Quotes
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Happiness requires three things, a good bank account, a good cook, and good digestion.
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If there were a nation of Gods, it would govern itself democratically. A government so perfect is not suited to men.
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The man who meditates is a depraved animal.
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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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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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All my misfortunes come of having thought too well of my fellows.
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We cannot teach children the danger of lying to men without feeling as men, the greater danger of lying to children.
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Nature never deceives us; it is always we who deceive ourselves.
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Girls should learn that so much finery is only put on to hide defects, and that the triumph of beauty is to shine by itself.
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I would rather be a man of paradoxes than a man of prejudices.
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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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Quit thy childhood, my friend, and wake up!
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Or, rather, let us be more simple and less vain.
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To write a good love letter, you ought to begin without knowing what you mean to say, and to finish without knowing what you have written.
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It is pity in which the state of nature takes the place of laws, morals and virtues, with the added advantage that no one there is tempted to disobey its gentle voice.
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What wisdom can you find greater than kindness.
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Trust your heart rather than your head.
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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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Why should we build our happiness on the opinons of others, when we can find it in our own hearts?
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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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To renounce freedom is to renounce one’s humanity, one’s rights as a man and equally one’s duties.
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My birth was my first misfortune.
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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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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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Every person has a right to risk their own life for the preservation of it.
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