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
red naked middle
The French painter Rousseau was once asked why he put a naked woman on a red sofa in the middle of his jungle pictures. He answered, 'I needed a bit of red there.'
soul taste splendor
The taste for splendor is hardly ever combined in the same souls with the taste for the honorable.
son men may
Every man having been born free and master of himself, no one else may under any pretext whatever subject him without his consent. To assert that the son of a slave is born a slave is to assert that he is not born a man.
passion voice body
The passions are the voice of the body.
civilization race evil
Civilization is a hopeless race to discover remedies for the evils it produces.
world madness madmen
To be sane in a world of madman is in itself madness.
freedom people liberty
Free people, remember this maxim: we may acquire liberty, but it is never recovered if it is once lost.
men rights humanity
To renounce liberty is to renounce being a man, to surrender the rights of humanity and even its duties. For he who renounces everything no indemnity is possible. Such a renunciation is incompatible with man's nature; to remove all liberty from his will is to remove all morality from his acts.
majority-rule political minorities
It is unnatural for a majority to rule, for a majority can seldom be organized and united for specific action, and a minority can.
firsts judgment mistaken
Do not base your life on the judgments of others; first, because they are as likely to be mistaken as you are, and further, because you cannot know that they are telling you their true thoughts.
life cute philosophical
Every man has a right to risk his own life for the preservation of it.
inspirational motivational freedom
Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains.
women reading book
The world is the book of women. Whatever knowledge they may possess is more commonly acquired by observation than by reading.
rocks years giving
I love idleness. I love to busy myself about trifles, to begin a hundred things and not finish one of them, to come and go as my fancy bids me, to change my plan every moment, to follow a fly in all its circlings, to try and uproot a rock to see what is underneath, eagerly to begin a ten-years' task to give it up after ten minutes: in short, to fritter away the whole day inconsequentially and incoherently, and to follow nothing but the whim of the moment.