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 liberty is to renounce being a man, to surrender the rights of humanity and even its duties.
More Jean-Jacques Rousseau Quotes
-
-
We cannot teach children the danger of lying to men without feeling as men, the greater danger of lying to children.
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU -
He who blushes is already guilty.
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU -
I may be no better, but at least I am different.
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU -
The sociable man, always outside himself, is capable of living only in the opinions of others and, so to speak, derives the sentiment of his own existence solely from their judgment.
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU -
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.
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU -
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 -
To renounce freedom is to renounce one’s humanity, one’s rights as a man and equally one’s duties.
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU -
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 ROUSSEAU -
The imagination which causes so many ravages among us, never speaks to the heart of savages.
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU -
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 ROUSSEAU -
What good would it be to possess the whole universe if one were its only survivor?
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU -
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, 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.
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?
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU -
Being wealthy isn’t just a question of having lots of money. It’s a question of what we want. Wealth isn’t an absolute, it’s relative to desire. Every time we seek something that we can’t afford, we can be counted as poor, how much money we may actually have.
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU