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
suffering miserable enjoy
The happiest is he who suffers least; the most miserable is he who enjoys least.
chains
Freedom is the power to choose our own chains
war men soldier
War is then not a relationship between one man and another, but a relationship between one State and another, in which individuals are enemies only by accident, not as men, nor even as citizens, but as soldiers; not as members of the fatherland, but as its defenders. Finally, any State can only have other States, and not men, as enemies, inasmuch as it is impossible to fix a true relation between things of different natures.
education done development
The falsification of history has done more to impede human development than any one thing known to mankind.
misfortunes
Our greatest misfortunes come to us from ourselves.
men may covenant
The social pact, far from destroying natural equality, substitutes, on the contrary, a moral and lawful equality for whatever physical inequality that nature may have imposed on mankind; so that however unequal in strength and intelligence, men become equal by covenant and by right.
inspirational delight
My liveliest delight was in having conquered myself.
inspirational wisdom kindness
What wisdom can you find that is greater than kindness?
wise children taught
Do you not know...that a child badly taught is farther from being wise than one not taught at all?
heart trust-your-heart
Trust your heart rather than your head.
government uniting may
The problem is to find a form of association which will defend and protect with the whole common force the person and goods of each associate, and in which each, while uniting himself with all, may still obey himself alone, and remain as free as before.
demand sovereign citizens
A citizen should render to the state all the services he can as soon as the sovereign demands them.
may doe dungeons
One may live tranquilly in a dungeon; but does life consist in living quietly?
men fellow-man natural
No man has any natural authority over his fellow men.