Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Jean-Jacques Rousseauwas a Francophone Genevan philosopher, writer, and composer of the 18th century. His political philosophy influenced the Enlightenment in France and across Europe, as well as aspects of the French Revolution and the overall development of modern political and educational thought...
NationalityFrench
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth28 June 1712
CityGeneva, Switzerland
CountryFrance
art people mind
Sovereigns always see with pleasure a taste for the arts of amusement and superfluity, which do not result in the exportation of bullion, increase among their subjects. They very well know that, besides nourishing that littleness of mind which is proper to slavery, the increase of artificial wants only binds so many more chains upon the people.
soul mind proportion
The mind grows narrow in proportion as the soul grows corrupt.
ethics
No one is happy unless he respects himself.
sympathy philosophy philosophical
We pity in others only the those evils which we ourselves have experienced.
real passion heart
I believed that I was approaching the end of my days without having tasted to the full any of the pleasures for which my heart thirsted...without having ever tasted that passion which, through lack of an object, was always suppressed. ...The impossibility of attaining the real persons precipitated me into the land of chimeras; and seeing nothing that existed worthy of my exalted feelings, I fostered them in an ideal world which my creative imagination soon peopled with beings after my own heart.
riches citizens enough
...in respect of riches, no citizen shall ever be wealthy enough to buy another, and none poor enough to be forced to sell himself.
suicide men order
Every man has the right to risk his own life in order to preserve it. Has it ever been said that a man who throws himself out the window to escape from a fire is guilty of suicide?
peace men thinking
Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains. Those who think themselves the masters of others are indeed greater slaves than they.
melting delirium ecstasy
I feel an indescribable ecstasy and delirium in melting, as it were, into the system of being, in identifying myself with the whole of nature..
men hands poverty
When a man dies he clutches in his hands only that which he has given away during his lifetime.
people different may
I may not be better than other people, but at least I'm different.
taken character opposites
There are times when I am so unlike myself that I might be taken for someone else of an entirely opposite character.
philosophy philosophical people
Fame is but the breath of people, and that often unwholesome.
survivor ifs whole
What good would it be to possess the whole universe if one were its only survivor?