Jean Jacques Rousseau
Biography
Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a major Genevois philosopher, writer, and composer of 18th-century Romanticism. His political philosophy influenced the French Revolution and the development of modern political, sociological and educational thought. His novel, *Emile: or, On Education*, which he considered his most important work, is a seminal treatise on the education of the whole person for citizenship. His sentimental novel, Julie, ou la nouvelle Héloïse, was of great importance to the development of pre-Romanticism and romanticism in fiction. Rousseau's autobiographical writings: his *Confessions*, which initiated the modern autobiography, and his *Reveries of a Solitary Walker* were among the pre-eminent examples of the late 18th-century movement known as the "Age of Sensibility", featuring an increasing focus on subjectivity and introspection that has characterized the modern age. Rousseau also made important contributions to music as a theorist. During the period of the French Revolution, Rousseau was the most popular of the philosophers among members of the Jacobin Club. He was interred as a national hero in the Panthéon in Paris, in 1794, 16 years after his death.<sup>[1][1]</sup> [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Jacques_Rousseau
Quotes from Jean Jacques Rousseau
"People who know little are usually great talkers, while men who know much say little."
995
"I prefer liberty with danger than peace with slavery."
996
"Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains."
997
"The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless."
998
"I would rather be a man of paradoxes than a man of prejudices."
999
"I know the feelings of my heart, and I know men. I am not made like any of those I have seen; I venture to believe that I am not made like any of those who are in existence. If I am not better, at least I am different. Whether Nature has acted rightly or wrongly in destroying the mould in which she cast me, can only be decided after I have been read."
1000
"It is too difficult to think nobly when one thinks only of earning a living."
1001
"To be sane in a world of madman is in itself madness."
1002
"What wisdom can you find greater than kindness."
1003
"Why should we build our happiness on the opinons of others, when we can find it in our own hearts?"
1004
"Every person has a right to risk their own life for the preservation of it."
1005
"To write a good love letter, you ought to begin without knowing what you mean to say, and to finish without knowing what you have written."
1006
"Those that are most slow in making a promise are the most faithful in the performance of it."
1007
"Civilization is a hopeless race to discover remedies for the evils it produces."
1008
"Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains. Those who think themselves the masters of others are indeed greater slaves than they."
1009
"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."
1010
"All my misfortunes come of having thought too well of my fellows."
1011
"I have never thought, for my part, that man's freedom consists in his being able to do whatever he wills, but that he should not, by any human power, be forced to do what is against his will."
1012
"I perceive God everywhere in His works. I sense Him in me; I see Him all around me."
1013
"There are times when I am so unlike myself that I might be taken for someone else of an entirely opposite character."
1014
"Trust your heart rather than your head."
1015
"The truth brings no man a fortune."
1016
"As soon as any man says of the affairs of the State "What does it matter to me?" the State may be given up for lost."
1017
"In any case, frequent punishments are a sign of weakness or slackness in the government. There is no man so bad that he cannot be made good for something. No man should be put to death, even as an example, if he can be left to live without danger to society."
1018
"It is as if my heart and my brain did not belong to the same person. Feelings come quicker than lightning and fill my soul, but they bring me no illumination; they burn me and dazzle me."
1019
"There is nothing better than the encouragement of a good friend."
1020
"Once you teach people to say what they do not understand, it is easy enough to get them to say anything you like."
1021
"Love, known to the person by whom it is inspired, becomes more bearable."
1022
"All wickedness comes from weakness. The child is wicked only because he is weak. Make him strong; he will be good. He who could do everything would never do harm."
1023
"The word ‘slavery’ and ‘right’ are contradictory, they cancel each other out. Whether as between one man and another, or between one man and a whole people, it would always be absurd to say: "I hereby make a covenant with you which is wholly at your expense and wholly to my advantage; I will respect it so long as I please and you shall respect it as long as I wish."
1024
"Falsehood has an infinity of combinations, but truth has only one mode of being."
1025
"MAN is born free; and everywhere he is in chains. One thinks himself the master of others, and still remains a greater slave than they."
1026