In respect of riches, no citizen shall ever be wealthy enough to buy another, and none poor enough to be forced to sell himself.
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAUTo renounce liberty is to renounce being a man, to surrender the rights of humanity and even its duties.
More Jean-Jacques Rousseau Quotes
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Nothing on this earth is worth buying at the price of human blood.
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One does not drink. One gives a kiss to his glass, and the wine returns a caress to you.
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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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Those that are most slow in making a promise are the most faithful in the performance of it.
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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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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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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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Civilization is a hopeless race to discover remedies for the evils it produces.
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However great a man’s natural talent may be, the act of writing cannot be learned all at once.
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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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The real world has its limits; the imaginary world is infinite. Unable to enlarge the one, let us restrict the other, for it is from the difference between the two alone that are born all the pains which make us truly unhappy.
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Or, rather, let us be more simple and less vain.
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I prefer liberty with danger than peace with slavery.
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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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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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My birth was my first misfortune.
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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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To do is to be.
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The man who meditates is a depraved animal.
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A taste for ostentation is rarely associated in the same souls with a taste for honesty.
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The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless.
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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 good would it be to possess the whole universe if one were its only survivor?
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Trust your heart rather than your head.
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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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