Quotes by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Reading, solitude, idleness, a soft and sedentary life, intercourse with women and young people, these are perilous paths for a young man, and these lead him constantly into danger.

What wisdom can you find that is greater than kindness?

Virtue is a state of war, and to live in it we have always to combat with ourselves.

Falsehood has an infinity of combinations, but truth has only one mode of being.

We are born weak, we need strength helpless, we need aid foolish, we need reason. All that we lack at birth, all that we need when we come to man’s estate, is the gift of education.

Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.

I have resolved on an enterprise that has no precedent and will have no imitator. I want to set before my fellow human beings a man in every way true to nature and that man will be myself.

Nature never deceives us it is we who deceive ourselves.

Money is the seed of money, and the first guinea is sometimes more difficult to acquire than the second million.

No man has any natural authority over his fellow men.