Jean-Baptiste Rousseau Quotes

#1. To reign by opinion, begin by trampling it under your feet.

Jean-Baptiste Rousseau

#2. Each State can have for enemies only other States, and not men; for between things disparate in nature there can be no real relation.

Jean-Baptiste Rousseau

#3. Astronomy was born of superstition; eloquence of ambition, hatred, falsehood, and flattery; geometry of avarice; physics of an idle curiosity; and even moral philosophy of human pride. Thus the arts and sciences owe their birth to our vices.

Jean-Baptiste Rousseau

#4. Who does not sufficiently hate vice, does not sufficiently love virtue.

Jean-Baptiste Rousseau

#5. Were there a people of gods, their government would be democratic. So perfect a government is not for men.

Jean-Baptiste Rousseau

#6. Truth is no road to fortune.

Jean-Baptiste Rousseau

#7. If you have but a single ruler, you lie at the discretion of a master who has no reason to love you: and if you have several, you must bear at once their tyranny and their divisions.

Jean-Baptiste Rousseau

#8. Youth is the time to study wisdom; old age is the time to practice it.

Jean-Baptiste Rousseau

#9. Do we wish men to be virtuous? Then let us begin by making them love their country.

Jean-Baptiste Rousseau

#10. The Catholic must adopt the decision handed down to him; the Protestant must learn to decide for himself.

Jean-Baptiste Rousseau

#11. Men always love what is good or what they find good; it is in judging what is good that they go wrong.

Jean-Baptiste Rousseau

#12. They must know but little of mankind who can imagine that, after they have been once seduced by luxury, they can ever renounce it.

Jean-Baptiste Rousseau

#13. Coercion created slavery, the cowardice of the slaves perpetuated it.

Jean-Baptiste Rousseau

#14. The vine that has been made to bear fruit in the spring, withers and dies before autumn.

Jean-Baptiste Rousseau

#15. Old men grasp more at life than babies, and leave it with a much worse grace than young people. It is because all their labours having been for this life, they perceive at last their trouble lost.

Jean-Baptiste Rousseau

#16. The man who has lived the longest is not he who has spent the greatest number of years, but he who has had the greatest sensibility of life.

Jean-Baptiste Rousseau

#17. It should be remembered that the foundation of the social contract is property; and its first condition, that every one should be maintained in the peaceful possession of what belongs to him.

Jean-Baptiste Rousseau

#18. The right of conquest has no foundation other than the right of the strongest.

Jean-Baptiste Rousseau

#19. Readiness of speech is often inability to hold the tongue.

Jean-Baptiste Rousseau

#20. Every artist loves applause. The praise of his contemporaries is the most valuable part of his recompense.

Jean-Baptiste Rousseau

#21. The less reasonable a cult is, the more men seek to establish it by force.

Jean-Baptiste Rousseau