Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712 – 1778)
Franco-Swiss philosopher of Enlightenment whose political ideas influenced the French Revolution, the development of socialist theory, and the growth of nationalism.
It is not enough to say that Jean-Jacques is close to us; he is one of us. His contemporaries and the generation that followed his have retained his redundancy and his eloquence.
Temperance and labor are the two best physicians of man; labor sharpens the appetite and temperance prevents from indulging to excess.
Truth is no road to fortune.
Hitler is an outcome of Rousseau.
L'homme est né libre, et partout il est dans les fers.
War then, is a relation — not between man and man: but between state and state; and individuals are enemies only accidentally: not as men, nor even as citizens: but as soldiers; not as members of their country, but as its defenders.
The strongest is never strong enough always to be master, unless he transforms strength into right, and obedience into duty.
Nothing is less in our power than the heart, and far from commanding we are forced to obey it.
To write a good love letter, you ought to begin without knowing what you mean to say, and to finish without knowing what you have written.
[F]ascism owed something to the Enlightenment idea that society need not be determined by tradition, but could be organized according to a blueprint derived from universal principles. The Enlightenment thinker Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s notion that society should be governed by one such universal ideal, the ‘general will’, is especially relevant, since it was taken up by the most revolutionary of the French Revolutionaries, the Jacobins. The Jacobins justified violence as a means to construct a new order and weed out those who opposed the general will (or the nation). They were ready to force people to be free.
He who is most slow in making a promise is the most faithful in performance of it. ** Variants: He who is slowest in making a promise is most faithful in its performance.
He who is the most slow in making a promise is the most faithful in the performance of it.
Force does not constitute right... obedience is due only to legitimate powers.
Men and nations can only be reformed in their youth; they become incorrigible as they grow old.
Sophie is not beautiful, but in her company men forget beautiful women, and beautiful women are dissatisfied with themselves.
We pity in others only the those evils which we ourselves have experienced.
You forget that the fruits belong to all and that the land belongs to no one.
You are worried about seeing him spend his early years in doing nothing. What! Is it nothing to be happy? Nothing to skip, play, and run around all day long? Never in his life will he be so busy again.
Women, in general, are not attracted to art at all, nor knowledge, and not at all to genius.
Insults are the arguments employed by those who are in the wrong.
The person who is slowest in making a promise is most faithful in its performance.