Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–78) was a Swiss-born French philosopher, author, political theorist, and composer. In many respects an original and contentious thinker, Rousseau’s significant works raised deep-seated questions in the fields of ethics, education, politics, and aesthetics. He ranks as one of the greatest intellectuals of the French Enlightenment and the Romantic generation.
Rousseau’s original thinking was that humans are by nature good, but are soiled by society. He endorsed a humanistic and progressive educational system that would develop the natural interests and potential of the child.
Born in Geneva, Switzerland, Rousseau had no formal education. In 1741, he moved to Paris to make a living from clerical work and music-copying. He became acquainted with Voltaire and Denis Diderot and contributed articles on music and political economy to the Encyclopédie.
In the 1750s, Rousseau came to fame with his Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men (1754) and other essays that were highly critical of the existing social order. He expressed his belief in the fundamental goodness of human nature, summarized in the concept of the “noble savage,” and the warping effects of civilization.
In 1762, Rousseau published his masterpiece, Du contrat social (A Treatise on the Social Contract, 1764,) which anticipated much of the thinking of the French Revolution. Social Contract argues for a version of the sovereignty of the whole citizen body over itself, expressing its legislative intent through the general will. One of Rousseau’s most notable axioms, “Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains,” comes from the Social Contract and has been a rallying-cry for rebels and reformers ever since.
In his novel Émile (1762,) Rousseau formulated new educational philosophies giving the child full scope for individual development in natural surroundings, protected from the corrupting influences of civilization.
Rousseau is also noted for his Les Confessions (1782–89; Confessions, 1783–91,) one of the earliest autobiographies. In 1794, his remains were placed alongside those of Voltaire in Paris’s Pantheon.
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Self-love is an instrument useful but dangerous: it often wounds the hand which makes use of it, and seldom does good without doing harm.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Self-love
Reading, solitude, idleness, a soft and sedentary life, intercourse with women and young people, these are perilous paths for a young man, and these lead him constantly into danger.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Youth, Men
Most nations, as well as people are impossible only in their youth; they become incorrigible as they grow older.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Nationalism, Nationality, Nation, Nations
Take the course opposite to custom and you will almost always do well.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Risk
We pity in others only the those evils which we ourselves have experienced.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Sympathy
Free people, remember this maxim: We may acquire liberty, but it is never recovered if it is once lost.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Freedom
Take from the philosopher the pleasure of being heard and his desire for knowledge ceases.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Science, Philosophy
It is a great mistake of many ardent students that they trust too much to their books, and do not draw from their own resources—forgetting that of all sophists our own reason is that which abuses us least.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Study
Base souls have no faith in great individuals.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Faith
Had I no other proof of the immortality of the soul than the oppression of the just and the triumph of the wicked in this world, this alone would prevent my having the least doubt of it. So shocking a discord amidst a general harmony of things would make me naturally look for a cause; I should say to myself we do not cease to exist with this life; everything reassumes its order after death.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Soul
It is not the criminal things that are hardest to confess, but the ridiculous and the shameful.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Honesty
Accent is the soul of language; it gives to it both feeling and truth.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Conscience is the voice of the soul, as the passions are the voice of the body.—No wonder they often contradict each other.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Conscience
We should not teach children the sciences; but give them a taste for them.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Motivation, Motivational
Although modesty is natural to man, it is not natural to children. Modesty only begins with the knowledge of evil.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Modesty, Humility
It is not our wrong actions which it requires courage to confess, so much as those which are ridiculous and foolish.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
An honest man nearly always thinks justly.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Honesty, Justice
Cities are the abyss of the human species.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
The English are predisposed to pride, the French to vanity.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Nationality, Nationalities, Nation, Nationalism
The mind grows narrow in proportion as the soul grows corrupt.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Mind
There are two things to be considered with regard to any scheme. In the first place, “Is it good in itself?” In the second, “Can it be easily put into practice?”
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Brains well prepared are the monuments where human knowledge is most surely engraved.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
I don’t know what is truth,
but I can tell you how to find it!
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Unity
Falsehood has an infinity of combinations, but truth has only one mode of being.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Truth
It is too difficult to think nobly when one thinks only of earning a living.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Work
Nothing is less in our power than the heart, and far from commanding we are forced to obey it.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Heart
What wisdom can you find that is greater than kindness?
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Wisdom, Service, Kindness, Compassion
To live is not breathing it is action.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Heroes are not known by the loftiness of their carriage; the greatest braggarts are generally the merest cowards.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Heroes, Coward, Defects, Heroism, Heroes/Heroism, Cowardice
Whoever blushes confesses guilt, true innocence never feels shame.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Guilt
Do not judge, and you will never be mistaken.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Judgment, Judges, Justice, Judging
One loses all the time which he might employ to better purpose.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Industry
Fame is but the breath of people, and that often unwholesome.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Fame
Happiness: A good bank account, a good cook, and a good digestion.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
A man says what he knows, a woman says what will please.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Words
The English people believes itself to be free; it is gravely mistaken; it is free only during election of members of parliament; as soon as the members are elected, the people is enslaved; it is nothing. In the brief moment of its freedom, the English people makes such a use of that freedom that it deserves to lose it.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Elections, Voting, Freedom
It is to law alone that men owe justice and liberty. It is this salutary organ, of the will of all which establishes in civil rights the natural equality between men. It is this celestial voice which dictates to each citizen the precepts of public reason, and teaches him to act according to the rules of his own judgment and not to behave inconsistently with himself. It is with this voice alone that political leaders should speak when. they command.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Equality
Temperance and labor are the two best physicians of man; labor sharpens the appetite, and temperance prevents from indulging to excess.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Doctors, Medicine, Virtue, Virtues, Labor, Appetite
Our affections as well as our bodies are in perpetual flux.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Love
Insults are the arguments employed by those who are in the wrong.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Insults
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