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.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
I may not amount to much, but at least I am unique.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Appreciation, Gratitude, Blessings
How many famous and high-spirited heroes have lived a day too long?
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Heroes/Heroism, Heroes, Heroism
Gratitude is a duty which ought to be paid, but which none have a right to expect.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Gratitude
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
The thirst after happiness is never extinguished in the heart of a man.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Heart, Goals, Happiness
The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless.—Not being able to enlarge the one, let us contract the other; for it is from their difference that all the evils arise which render us unhappy.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Reality, Imagination
Let the trumpet of the day of judgment sound when it will, I shall appear with this book in my hand before the Sovereign Judge, and cry with a loud voice, This is my work, there were my thoughts, and thus was I. I have freely told both the good and the bad, have hid nothing wicked, added nothing good.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Honesty
The person who has lived the most is not the one with the most years but the one with the richest experiences.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Age, Time
The English are predisposed to pride, the French to vanity.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Nation, Nationalities, Nationalism, Nationality
To endure is the first thing that a child ought to learn, and that which he will have the most need to know.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Adversity
People who know little are usually great talkers, while men who know much say little.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: People, Speakers, Greatness, Wisdom, Speaking
The hatred of the wicked is only roused the more from the impossibility of finding any just grounds on which it can rest; and the very consciousness of their own injustice is only a grievance the more against him who is the object of it.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Wickedness
A country cannot subsist well without liberty, nor liberty without virtue.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Liberty, Freedom
As soon as any man says of the affairs of State, What does it matter to me? that State may be given up for lost.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Self-Discovery
Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Patience
The English are proud; the French are vain.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Britain
A man says what he knows, a woman says what will please.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Words
That which renders life burdensome to us, generally arises from the abuse of it.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
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
Every person has a right to risk their own life for the preservation of it.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
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
God is intelligent; but in what manner? Man is intelligent by the act of reasoning, but the supreme intelligence lies under no necessity to reason. He requires neither premise nor consequences; nor even the simple form of a proposition. His knowledge is purely intuitive. He beholds equally what is and what will be. All truths are to Him as one idea, as all places are but one point, and all times one moment.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Knowledge
The body politic, as well as the human body, begins to die as soon as it is born, and carries itself the causes of its destruction.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Government
Yes, if the life and death of Socrates are those of a wise man, the life and death of Jesus are those of a god.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Great men never make bad use of their superiority; they see it, and feel it, and are not less modest. The more they have, the more they know their own deficiencies.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Greatness, Greatness & Great Things
Heroes are not known by the loftiness of their carriage; the greatest braggarts are generally the merest cowards.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Cowardice, Heroes/Heroism, Heroism, Heroes, Coward, Defects
Adversity is a great teacher, but this teacher makes us pay dearly for its instruction; and often the profit we derive, is not worth the price we paid.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Adversity
Plant and your spouse plants with you; weed and you weed alone.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Marriage
Do to others as you would have others do to you, inspires all men with that other maxim of natural goodness a great deal less perfect, but perhaps more useful: Do good to yourself with as little prejudice as you can to others.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Doing
Kings wish to be absolute, and they are sometimes told that their best way to become so is to make themselves beloved by the people. This maxim is doubtless a very admirable one, and in some respects true; but unhappily it is laughed at in court.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Kings
No man has any natural authority over his fellow men.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Authority, One liners
It is not just when a villainous act has been committed that it torments us; it is when we think of it afterward, for the remembrance of it lasts forever.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Remorse
Insults are the arguments employed by those who are in the wrong.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Insults
Peruse the works of our philosophers; with all their pomp of diction, how mean, how contemptible, are they, compared with the Scriptures! Is it possible that a book at once so simple and sublime should be merely the work of man? The Jewish authors were incapable of the diction, and strangers to the morality contained in the Gospel, the marks of whose truths are so striking and inimitable that the inventor would be a more astonishing character than the hero.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Bible
The world is the book of women. Whatever knowledge they may possess is more commonly acquired by observation than by reading.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Book, Woman
To renounce liberty is to renounce being a man, to surrender the rights of humanity and even its duties
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Liberty
Remorse sleeps during prosperity but awakes bitter consciousness during adversity.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Repentance, Forgiveness
There is no folly of which a man who is not a fool cannot get rid except vanity; of this nothing cures a man except experience of its bad consequences, if indeed anything can cure it.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Vanity
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
Topics: Originality
Not all the subtleties of metaphysics can make me doubt a moment of the immortality of the soul, and of a beneficent providence. I feel it, I believe it, I desire it, I hope it, and will defend it to my last breath.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Immortality
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