Here are some of the best quotes by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the influential Enlightenment philosopher, drawn from his major works:
On Freedom & Society
- “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.”
— The Social Contract - “I prefer liberty with danger than peace with slavery.”
— Various sources - “Freedom is the power to choose our own chains.”
— Various sources - “Every man having been born free and master of himself, no one else may under any pretext whatever subject him without his consent.”
— The Social Contract
On Human Nature & Morality
- “People in their natural state are basically good. But this natural innocence is corrupted by the evils of society.”
— Emile, or On Education - “What wisdom can you find that is greater than kindness?”
— Various sources - “Nature never deceives us; it is always we who deceive ourselves.”
— Emile, or On Education - “People who know little are usually great talkers, while men who know much say little.”
— Various sources
On Politics & Inequality
- “The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, said ‘This is mine,’ and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society.”
— Discourse on Inequality - “As to wealth, no citizen should be rich enough to buy another, and none poor enough to be forced to sell himself.”
— The Social Contract
On Life & Experience
- “The man who has lived the most is not he who has counted the most years but he who has most felt life.”
— Emile, or On Education - “Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.”
— Emile, or On Education - “To live is not to breathe but to act. It is to make use of our organs, our senses, our faculties, of all the parts of ourselves which give us the sentiment of our existence.”
— Emile, or On Education
On Self & Individuality
- “I may be no better, but at least I am different.”
— Confessions - “There are times when I am so unlike myself that I might be taken for someone else of an entirely opposite character.”
— Confessions - “I hate books; they only teach us to talk about things we know nothing about.”
— Emile, or On Education
On Truth & Perception
- “There are always four sides to a story: your side, their side, the truth, and what really happened.”
— Various sources - “The falsification of history has done more to impede human development than any one thing known to mankind.”
— Various sources - “Once you teach people to say what they do not understand, it is easy enough to get them to say anything you like.”
— Emile, or On Education - “Why should we build our happiness on the opinions of others, when we can find it in our own hearts?”
— The Social Contract and Discourses
These quotes capture Rousseau’s revolutionary ideas on freedom, human nature, politics, and self-awareness. For more, you can explore his works like The Social Contract, Emile, and Confessions.
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