Quotations From JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU

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• 1.

  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 (1712-1778), Swiss-born French philosopher, political theorist. Emile, bk. 1 (1762).
  
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• 2.

  We are born, so to speak, twice over; born into existence, and born into life; born a human being, and born a man.

  Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), Swiss-born-French philosopher, political theorist. Emile, bk. 4 (1762).
  
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• 3.

  The first man, who after enclosing a piece of ground, took it into his head to say, this is mine, and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society.

  Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), Swiss-born French philosopher, political theorist. Discourse on the Origin and Foundation of Inequality among Mankind (Discours sur l'origine et les fondements de l'inégalité parmi les hommes), second part (1755).
  
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• 4.

  It is too difficult to think nobly when one thinks only of earning a living.

  Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), Swiss-born French philosopher, political theorist. Confessions, bk. 2, ch. 9 (written 1766-1770, publ. 1781-1788).
• 5.

  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 (1712-1778), Swiss-born French philosopher, political theorist. Emile, bk. 4 (1762).
  
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• 6.

  Ordinary readers, forgive my paradoxes: one must make them when one reflects; and whatever you may say, I prefer being a man with paradoxes than a man with prejudices.

  Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), Swiss-born French philosopher, political theorist. Emile, or Education (Emile, ou de l'Education), bk. 2 (1762).
• 7.

  I hate books; they only teach us to talk about what we don't know.

  Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), Swiss-born French philosopher, political theorist. Emile, or Education (Emile, ou de l'Education), bk. 3 (1762).
  
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• 8.

  Everything that comes out of the hands of the Creator of all things is good, everything degenerates in the hands of man.

  Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), Swiss-born French philosopher, political theorist. Emile, or Education (Emile, ou de l'Education), bk. 1 (1762). First sentence.
• 9.

  It is a mania shared by philosophers of all ages to deny what exists and to explain what does not exist.

  Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), Swiss-born French philosopher, political theorist. The New Eloïse (La Nouvelle Héloïse), Rousseau's footnote to letter 10, part 6 (1761).
• 10.

  Religious persecutors are not believers, they are rascals.

  Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), Swiss-born French philosopher, political theorist. The New Eloïse (La Nouvelle Héloïse), Rousseau's footnote to letter 5, part 5 (1761).