Jean-Jacques Rousseau

“People who know little are usually great talkers, while men who know much say little.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau

“I prefer liberty with danger than peace with slavery.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau

“Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau

“The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau

“I am not made like any of those I have seen. I venture to believe that I am not made like any of those who are in existence. If I am not better, at least I am different.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau

“I would rather be a man of paradoxes than a man of prejudices.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile or On Education

“The first person who, having enclosed a plot of land, 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. What crimes, wars, murders, what miseries and horrors would the human race have been spared, had some one pulled up the stakes or filled in the ditch and cried out to his fellow men: "Do not listen to this imposter. You are lost if you forget that the fruits of the earth belong to all and the earth to no one!”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract and The Discourses

“What wisdom can you find greater than kindness.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau

“It is too difficult to think nobly when one thinks only of earning a living.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Confessions

“To be sane in a world of madman is in itself madness.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau

“Every person has a right to risk their own life for the preservation of it.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau

“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.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau

“Why should we build our happiness on the opinions of others, when we can find it in our own hearts?”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract and Discourses

“Or, rather, let us be more simple and less vain.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau

“Those that are most slow in making a promise are the most faithful in the performance of it.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau

“Civilization is a hopeless race to discover remedies for the evils it produces.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau

“Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains. Those who think themselves the masters of others are indeed greater slaves than they.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau

“Every man having been born free and master of himself, no one else may under any pretext whatever subject him without his consent. To assert that the son of a slave is born a slave is to assert that he is not born a man.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract

“They say that Caliph Omar, when consulted about what had to be done with the library of Alexandria, answered as follows: 'If the books of this library contain matters opposed to the Koran, they are bad and must be burned. If they contain only the doctrine of the Koran, burn them anyway, for they are superfluous.' Our learned men have cited this reasoning as the height of absurdity. However, suppose Gregory the Great was there instead of Omar and the Gospel instead of the Koran. The library would still have been burned, and that might well have been the finest moment in the life of this illustrious pontiff.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on the Sciences and Arts (1st Discourse) and Polemics

“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.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau

“I perceive God everywhere in His works. I sense Him in me; I see Him all around me.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau

“All my misfortunes come of having thought too well of my fellows.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau

“...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 Rousseau, The Social Contract

“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 Social Contract

“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.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Reveries of the Solitary Walker

“I hate books; they only teach us to talk about things we know nothing about.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau

“Trust your heart rather than your head.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau

“The first man who, having fenced in a piece of land, said "This is mine," and found people naïve enough to believe him, that man was the true founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars, and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows: Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin of Inequality

“The truth brings no man a fortune.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau

“There are times when I am so unlike myself that I might be taken for someone else of an entirely opposite character.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Confessions