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.
In reality, the difference is, that the savage lives within himself while social man lives outside himself and can only live in the opinion of others, so that he seems to receive the feeling of his own existence only from the judgement of others concerning him. It is not to my present purpose to insist on the indifference to good and evil which arises from this disposition, in spite of our many fine works on morality, or to show how, everything being reduced to appearances, there is but art and mummery in even honour, friendship, virtue, and often vice itself, of which we at length learn the secret of boasting; to show, in short, how abject we are, and never daring to ask ourselves in the midst of so much philosophy, benevolence, politeness, and of such sublime codes of morality, we have nothing to show for ourselves but a frivolous and deceitful appearance, honour without virtue, reason without wisdom, and pleasure without happiness.
National Socialism is the fulfillment of Continental "liberalism" which stems largely from Rousseau […] The continental Liberals never were liberals in the English sense [i.e., never were classical liberals]; their "liberalism" was nothing else but the struggle against the existing order and the old tradition. Foolishly enough the English Liberals supported their continental "coreligionists," never being fully aware of the abyss which actually divided them.
A country cannot subsist well without liberty, nor liberty without virtue.
There is a deportment, which suits the figure and talents of each person; it is always lost when we quit to assume that of another.
All of my misfortunes come from having thought too well of my fellows.
Rousseau’s unforgivable crime was his rejection of the graces and luxuries of civilized existence. Voltaire had sung “The superfluous, that most necessary thing." For the high bourgeois standard of living Rousseau would substitute the middling peasant’s. It was the country versus the city – an exasperating idea for them, as was the amazing fact that every new work of Rousseau’s was a huge success, whether the subject was politics, theater, education, religion, or a novel about love.
Supreme happiness consists in self-content.
A utopian vision, once it is translated into political idiom, becomes mendacious or self-contradictory; it provides new names for old injustice or hides the contradictions under ad hoc invented labels. This is especially true of revolutionary utopias, whether elaborated in the actual revolutionary process or simply applied in its course. The Orwellian language had been known, though not codified, long before modern totalitarian despotism. Rousseau’s famous slogan, “One has to compel people to freedom,” is a good example.
We remain in the Romantic cycle initiated by Rousseau: liberal idealism canceled by violence, barbarism, disillusionment and cynicism.
The abuse of books kills science. Believing that we know what we have read, we believe that we can dispense with learning it.
L'accent est l'âme du discours.
To live is not merely to breathe: it is to act; it is to make use of our organs, senses, faculties — of all those parts of ourselves which give us the feeling of existence.
He who pretends to look upon death without fear, lies.
One is only happy before he is happy.
O? est l’homme de bien qui ne doit rien ? son pays ? Quel qu’il soit, il lui doit ce qu’il y a de plus précieux pour l’homme, la mortalité de ses actions et l’amour de la vertu.
Your first appearance, he said to me, is the gauge by which you will be measured; try to manage that you may go beyond yourself in after times, but beware of ever doing less.
It is not the criminal things which are hardest to confess, but the ridiculous and shameful.
If there is in this world a well-attested account, it is that of vampires. Nothing is lacking: official reports, affidavits of well-known people, of surgeons, of priests, of magistrates; the judicial proof is most complete. And with all that, who is there who believes in vampires?
In the strict sense of the term, a true democracy has never existed, and never will exist. It is against natural order that the great number should govern and that the few should be governed.
When the people shall have nothing more to eat, they will eat the rich.