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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Slaves lose everything in their chains, even the desire of escaping from them.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Miscellaneous, Desire, Slavery
Those that are most slow in making a promise are the most faithful in the performance of it.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Promises, Promise, Commitment
If there were a people consisting of gods, they would be governed democratically; so perfect a government is not suitable to men.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Democracy
The tone of good conversation is brilliant and natural.—It is neither tedious nor frivolous.—It is instructive without pedantry; gay, without tumultuousness; polished, without affectation; gallant, without insipidity; waggish, without equivocation.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Conversation
Liberty is obedience to the law which one has laid down for oneself.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Obedience, Liberty
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
Watch a cat when it enters a room for the first time. It searches and smells about, it is not quiet for a moment, it trusts nothing until it has examined and made acquaintance with everything.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Cats
The dignity of woman consists in being unknown to the world.—Her glory is the esteem of her husband; her pleasure the happiness of her family.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Wife, Woman
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, Labor, Virtue, Appetite, Medicine, Virtues
Cities are the abyss of the human species.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Nature never deceives us; it is we who deceive ourselves.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Truth, Nature
Happiness: A good bank account, a good cook, and a good digestion.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Gratitude is a duty which ought to be paid, but which none have a right to expect.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Gratitude
We are born weak, we need strength; helpless, we need aid; foolish, we need reason. All that we lack at birth, all that we need when we come to man’s estate, is the gift of education.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Education
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
Remorse sleeps during prosperity but awakes bitter consciousness during adversity.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Forgiveness, Repentance
Man is born free, yet he is everywhere in chains.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Freedom
The thirst after happiness is never extinguished in the heart of a man.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Goals, Heart, Happiness
The English are predisposed to pride, the French to vanity.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Nationalism, Nation, Nationality, Nationalities
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
Every person has a right to risk their own life for the preservation of it.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
We pity in others only the those evils which we ourselves have experienced.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Sympathy
Brains well prepared are the monuments where human knowledge is most surely engraved.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
I have always said and felt that true enjoyment cannot be described.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Enjoyment
Take the course opposite to custom and you will almost always do well.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Risk
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
Taste is, so to speak, the microscope of the judgment.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Taste
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
It is not the criminal things that are hardest to confess, but the ridiculous and the shameful.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Honesty
Whoever blushes confesses guilt, true innocence never feels shame.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Guilt
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