"A citizen should render to the state all the services he can as soon as the sovereign demands them."
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Quote collection
Jean-Jacques Rousseau quotes (page 14 of 20)
388 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"There is one further distinguishing characteristic of man which is very specific indeed and about which there can be no dispute, and that is the faculty of self-improvement - a faculty which, with the help of circumstance, progressively develops all our other faculties."
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"Women, in general, are not attracted to art at all, nor knowledge, and not at all to genius."
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"To abstain that we may enjoy is the epicurianism of reason."
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"Temperance and labor are the two real physicians of man."
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"Leave those vain moralists, my friend, and return to the depth of your soul: that is where you will always rediscover the source of the sacred fire which so often inflamed us with love of the sublime virtues; that is where you will see the eternal image of true beauty, the contemplation of which inspires us with a holy enthusiasm."
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"It is not our criminal actions that require courage to confess, but those which are ridiculous and foolish."
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"Everything degenerates in the hands of man."
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"We are born, so to speak, twice over; born into existence, and born into life; born a human being, and born a man."
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"Childhood is the sleep of reason. [Fr., L'enfance est le sommeil de la raison.]"
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"Chemistry... is like the maid occupied with daily civilisation; she is busy with fertilisers, medicines, glass, insecticides ... for she dispenses the recipes."
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"We pity in others only the those evils which we ourselves have experienced."
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"One must choose between making a man or a citizen, for one cannot make both at the same time."
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"The taste for splendor is hardly ever combined in the same souls with the taste for the honorable."
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"I don't know what is truth,but I can tell you how to find it!"
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"Conscience is the voice of the soul, the passions are the voice of the body. It is strange that these voices often contradict each other?"
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"Our passions are the chief means of self-preservation; to try to destroy them is therefore as absurd as it is useless; this would be to overcome nature, to reshape God's handiwork. If God bade man annihilate the passions he has given him, God would bid him be and not be; He would contradict himself. He has never given such a foolish commandment, there is nothing like it written on the heart of man, and what God will have a man do, He does not leave to the words of another man. He speaks Himself; His words are written in the secret heart."
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"A person who can break wind is not dead."
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"The first step towards vice is to shroud innocent actions in mystery, and whoever likes to conceal something sooner or later has reason to conceal it."
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"Taste is, so to speak, the microscope of the judgment."
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