Quotes by Jean Jacques Rousseau

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An evil deed torments us not when we commit it, but much later, when we remember it; for the memory of such a deed is never erased.

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Youth is the time to acquire wisdom, and old age is the time to put it into practice.

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Vanity is very much like a balloon filled with air, from which a storm rushes out as soon as you prick it.

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Vanity - here is the source and beginning of all our passions; it is born with us and does not leave us until the last moments of life.

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Wealth is necessary, perhaps, to give a piece of bread to the poor; but perhaps if there were no wealth, there would be no poor.

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Praise corrupts those who love it.

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The first rule: it is proper to the human heart to put itself not in the place of those among men who are happier than we are, but rather in the place of those who are more worthy of pity than ourselves.

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The first reward of justice is the consciousness of having acted justly.

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Address the one you are educating according to age. Don't let it even occur to him that you have any power over him.

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Nothing attracts more ingratitude than a favor for which no gratitude is sufficient.

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Never, say the philosophers, will the truth harm men: this is a serious proof that they do not tell the truth.

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The sadness, the longing, the regret, the despair of fleeting misfortunes that do not make a nest in the soul; and experience teaches us how deceptive is a bitter feeling, under the power of which we believe our misfortunes to be eternal. Life itself means nothing; its price depends on how we use it.

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Let us not mix the ages, as we mix the seasons: we must be ourselves at all times, and not resist nature, for vain efforts consume our life and prevent us from making use of it. A bad deed torments us not immediately when it was done, but when, after a long time, you remember it because the memory of it does not fade.

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We are born weak - we need strength; we are born helpless - we need help; we are born ignorant - we need wisdom. Everything we don't have at birth and can't do without, becoming mature, we get through education.

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The greatest virtuous deeds were done for love of country.

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The happiest is he who best endures pain; the most unhappy is he who feels the least pleasure.

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He who does not fear death cannot be dishonest.

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The language of reason will be heard if it passes through the heart.

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I know no greater enemy of men than the "friend of all," who, being constantly excited about everything, praises the wicked at once, and encourages with his criminal indulgence the vices that give rise to disorders in society.

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To live in virtue, we must constantly fight with ourselves.

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Boundless joy causes tears rather than laughter.

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Man is very strong when he is content with what he has and very weak when he tries to rise above mankind.

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An hour of work will teach you more than a day of explanations.

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Insulting is something very convenient: you can attack with the help of a single word, but you need whole pages to defend.

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Happiness is an unchanging state inaccessible to man in this world. Everything on this earth is incessant motion that does not allow anyone to take a constant form. Everything is changing around us. And we ourselves change, and no one can be sure that tomorrow he will like what he likes today. Therefore, all our thoughts of happiness in this world prove to be chimeras.

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Just as the first step to good is to do no harm, the first step to happiness is to try not to suffer.

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Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.

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A thousand roads lead astray; to the truth - only one.

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Legislative works are difficult not by ascertaining some facts, but by removing the causes that conditioned them.

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Loneliness awakens a love of people and a keen interest in them.

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If the Supreme Being did not make the world better, it means that he could not do it this way.

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If we hated vice as much as we loved pleasure, we could as easily abstain from tempting sin as from the deadly poison in our favorite food.

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The only art of being happy is to recognize that your happiness is in your hands.

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The good that someone has done for us binds us emotionally to him.

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Good is the sublime in action.

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Let childhood ripen in childhood.

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All man's morality lies in his intentions.

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Our wisdom consists of slavish superstitions. All our habits are only submission, oppression, rapture.

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All passions are good when we know how to control them, and they are bad when we obey them.

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Human education begins from the moment of birth. He doesn't speak yet, he doesn't hear, but he's already learning. Experience precedes learning. The less people know, the more they think they know.

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If true happiness belongs to the wise man, it means that he is the only one from whom fate will not take anything.

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If the public good does not make a rule out of moral justice, then it can make the law a weapon of political tyranny, as it has very often done.

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I know of only three means by which we can influence the morals of the people: the power of law, the power of public opinion, and the charm of satisfaction.

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He who wants to be free is free.

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He who is careful with promises, is more precise in fulfilling them.

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The art of maximizing pleasure lies in the ability to be stingy with it.

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There are people buried at a hundred years old, but who are dead from birth.

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Sometimes the shot misses its target but the intention cannot fail.

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It is not ignorance that causes evil, but blindness and error. People go astray not because they don't know, but because they think they know everything.

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Knowing what is good is more important than knowing a lot.

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Misfortune is undoubtedly a good teacher; but the lessons of this teacher cost so much, and the benefit derived from them costs so little.

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Addiction to things that have no moral character does not harm liberty, nor does it give rise to vice; dependence on people, being unbridled, gives rise to everything.

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Usually, people who know little are very talkative, and people who know a lot talk little.

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Imagination embellishes nothing of what we already possess; blindness ends the moment satisfaction begins.

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To see an injustice and to be silent is to take part.

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I am afraid that he who behaves with me at the first meeting as if we had known each other for twenty years, will not behave, in twenty years, as if he had never known me, if I ask him for any service.

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The biggest mistake of the education process is haste.

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If we replace the pleasant with the useful, the pleasant always wins.

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You will never raise wise men if you kill the wit in the child.

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Beware of the passions that lie to us and make us commit what we do not want.

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Is silence a good thing? In prison, for example, one lives quietly, but does it follow from this that it is good there? The Greeks locked in the cave of Cyclopiior lived there quietly, waiting for their turn to be eaten.

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To live is not to breathe, but to act. The longest lived is not the one who is a hundred years old, but the one who felt life the most.

"Ignorance cannot lead to evil, misconceptions lead to evil. It’s not what people do know, it’s what they pretend that they do."

"You can stand firm in a fight against everything except kindness."

"Conscience is the real judge between good and bad, conscience is what makes a person similar to God, and conscience is the greatest advantage of human nature. Without conscience there would be nothing that would raise us above the animals, and people would move from one lie to another."

"It is very important not to kill children’s natural taste by forcing them to become meat eaters, not only for their health, but for the sake of their character. We do not know the reason, but we know that people who eat a lot of meat are usually cruel."

"You seek the cause of evil, and it is only in yourself."

"We live in the age of philosophy, science, and intellect. Huge libraries are open for everyone. Everywhere we have schools, colleges, and universities which give us the wisdom of the people from many previous millennia. And what then? Have we become wiser for all this? Do we better understand our life, or the meaning of our existence? Do we know what is good for our life?"

"Oh, conscience: you are the deathless voice of heaven, and a true guide and judge of goodness. You make a person resemble God."

"It is surprising that I could not see a very simple truth: behind and above this world and our lives, there is someone who knows why this world exists and why we exist in this world. And our lives are as bubbles in boiling water, which appear, rise to the surface, pop, and disappear. The unity of all living beings exists in this world where everybody and everything quietly seeks God. It is only unbelieving atheists who see eternal silence."

"All the nations of the world name and respect God. Different people give him different names, and put different clothes on him; but there is only one God under all these different manifestations."

"There are thousands of ways which lead to deception, and there is only one way which leads to the truth."

"If you ask for support from God, then you will learn how to find it in yourself. He does not change us, but we change ourselves by getting closer to Him. All ask from Him, as if He should help us, but in the end we give these things to ourselves."

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Man is born free and yet lives everywhere in shackles.

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So to speak, we are born twice, once to exist, the second time to live.

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The God I worship is not a god of darkness; he did not give the meaning to prohibit its use. To ask me to give up my reason would be to insult its creator.

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I gladly confess to you that the majesty of the holy scriptures amazes me and the holiness of the Gospel speaks to my heart. Just look at how eloquent the books of the philosophers are, how insignificant they seem besides. Is it possible that a book so noble and at the same time so simple could be a human creation? Is it possible that the person to whom he tells his story is himself just a person? Just a voice promoted by a fan or an ambitious sectarian? What gentleness! What moral purity. What a touching charm in his teachings! What loftiness in his principles! What profound wisdom in his discourses! What audacity! What subtlety, and at the same time, what impact there is in your answers! What power over his passions. Where is that man, that sage, who can act, suffer and die in this way without weakness or ostentation?

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If you want to understand a person, look at people; and if you want to understand people, look at animals.

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Insults are the "arguments" of those who are not right.

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Emphasis is the soul of the speech, it gives it the feeling and the truth.

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Nothing in our world is worth the price of human blood.

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Whoever renounces his freedom, his humanity, his human rights, what's more: he renounces his duty.

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The government and the laws provide for the safety and welfare of the assembled people, the sciences, literature and the arts, no less tyrannical and perhaps even more powerful forces, cover with garlands the iron chains that have been beaten on the people, suppressing in them the feeling that they were originally born free , they endear slavery with them and make people what is usually called a civilized people.

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Virtue is nothing but the strength and liveliness of the soul.

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They no longer desecrate the name of the Lord of the universe with blasphemy, but they insult the Lord with blasphemy, and this does not even hurt our sensitive ears.

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Formerly the Romans paid for it by practicing virtue; when they began to study it, all was lost.

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Know at last, you peoples, that nature wanted to keep science away from you, just as mothers tear the dangerous weapon from the hands of their children; that every time he hides his secrets from you, he saves you from so much pain, and if you have to pay for the acquisition of knowledge with effort, this effort is not the smallest benefit.

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I do not know what fate Heaven has in store for me, but I hope to the last that it will not abandon the cause of the righteous.

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Self-praise, even in the strictest sense of justice, would be rather an abasement than an esteem of ourselves, and it would show how little knowledge of humanity it would be to think that by this remonstrance men can be moved out of their error, in which they feel comfortable.

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Such is the fate of mankind: reason shows us the goal, and passions take us away from it.

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The first person who thought of fencing off a piece of land and saying: this is mine, and who found people single-minded enough to believe this, was the founder of civil society. From how much sin, war and murder, from how much misery, he would have saved the human race, who then pulls out the stakes, buries the ditch, and shouts to his neighbors: beware of listening to this impostor! You are lost if you forget that the fruits of the earth belong to everyone, but the earth belongs to no one.

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I learned from my own experience that the source of true happiness lies within ourselves, and that people cannot make someone who wants to be happy truly unhappy.

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Old people always cling to life more than children and part with it more reluctantly than young people. After all, all their work was for this life, so in the end they feel that their efforts have been wasted. All their worries, all their possessions, all the fruits of their busy, sleepless nights, they leave everything here when they leave. In their lives, they never thought of acquiring something that they could take with them to death.

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Freedom is not that you can do what you want, but that you don't have to do what you don't want.

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Those who know little are usually good speakers, and those who know a lot speak little.

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The money that is yours is the instrument of your freedom, while the money that you chase makes you its servant.

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Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.

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Look for mediocrity in everything, even beauty. Pleasure does not wear out like beauty; it has an inner life and is always running out. A pleasant and good woman will please her husband in thirty years as she did on the first day.

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Falsehood can take on an infinite number of forms, and truth has only one way of being.

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It is still worth studying wisdom when you are young, you have to practice it when you are old.

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It is always the fate of the weak to feed the mighty with their own being.

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Happiness does not wear an external badge, so that we can recognize it, we should read the heart of a happy person; but the satisfaction radiates from the look, the behavior, the tone of voice, the behavior, and like an overflow to the one who perceives it.

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If there is any account with a sufficient number of witnesses, it is the one about vampires. Nothing is missing. Official reports, sworn written statements of well-known persons - doctors, priests, police judges - no lawyer could ask for more convincing evidence. And yet, who believes in vampires?

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The people want good, but they don't always know what is good.

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Man was born to act and think, not to philosophize. Philosophizing only makes you unhappy without making you better or smarter.

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I am not like any of those whom I have met: I dare to believe that I am made differently than anyone else in existence. I may not be worth more than them, but I am different anyway.

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The expectation is a hundred times more torturous than the reality, and the threat is more terrible to me than the blow. As soon as trouble occurs, everything that is the product of imagination is stripped away from it, and only what is really real remains.