"People in their natural state are basically good. But this natural innocence,however, is corrupted by the evils of society."
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Quote collection
Jean-Jacques Rousseau quotes (page 1 of 20)
388 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"I prefer liberty with danger than peace with slavery."
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"There are always four sides to a story: your side, their side, the truth and what really happened."
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"Freedom is the power to choose our own chains"
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"The freedom of Mankind does not lie in the fact that can do what we want, but that we do not have to do that which we do not want."
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"Plants are shaped by cultivation and men by education. .. We are born weak, we need strength; we are born totally unprovided, we need aid; we are born stupid, we need judgment. Everything we do not have at our birth and which we need when we are grown is given us by education."
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"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."
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"People who know little are usually great talkers, while men who know much say little."
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"Why should we build our happiness on the opinons of others, when we can find it in our own hearts?"
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"Those people who treat politics and morality separately will never understand either of them."
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"The first person who, having enclosed a plot of land, took it into his head to say this is mine and found people simple enough to believe him was the true founder of civil society. What crimes, wars, murders, what miseries and horrors would the human race have been spared, had some one pulled up the stakes or filled in the ditch and cried out to his fellow men: "Do not listen to this imposter. You are lost if you forget that the fruits of the earth belong to all and the earth to no one!"
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"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."
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"Socrates dies with honor, surrounded by his disciples listening to the most tender words -the easiest death that one could wish to die. Jesus dies in pain, dishonor, mockery, the object of universal cursing - the most horrible death that one could fear. At the receipt of the cup of poison, Socrates blesses him who could not give it to him without tears; Jesus, while suffering the sharpest pains, prays for His most bitter enemies. If Socrates lived and died like a philosopher, Jesus lived and died like a god."
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"No one is happy unless he respects himself."
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"The person who has lived the most is not the one with the most years but the one with the richest experiences."
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"I may be no better, but at least I am different."
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"Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains."
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"Free people, remember this maxim: we may acquire liberty, but it is never recovered if it is once lost."
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"Once you teach people to say what they do not understand, it is easy enough to get them to say anything you like."
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"Civilization is a hopeless race to discover remedies for the evils it produces."
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