Jean-Jacques Rousseau quotes

On authenticity

“Let's go dance under the elms: / Step lively, young lassies. / Let's go dance under the elms: / Gallants, take up your pipes.”

“As a general rule—never substitute the symbol for the thing signified, unless it is impossible to show the thing itself; for the child's attention is so taken up with the symbol that he will forget what it signifies.”

“I have entered on an enterprise which is without precedent, and will have no imitator. I propose to show my fellows a man as nature made him, and this man shall be myself.”

“It is too difficult to think nobly when one thinks only of earning a living.”

“I remembered the way out suggested by a great princess when told that the peasants had no bread: Well, let them eat cake.”

“He thinks like a philosopher, but governs like a king.”

On freedom

“Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.”

“The supreme enjoyment is in satisfaction with oneself ; it is in order to deserve this satisfaction that we are placed on earth and endowed with freedom.”

On time

“All that time is lost which might be better employed.”

“Days of absence, sad and dreary, / Clothed in sorrow's dark array,—Days of absence, I am weary: She I love is far away.”

On patience

“Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.”

On wholeness

“What good would it be to possess the whole universe if one were its only survivor?”

On joy

“The thirst after happiness is never extinguished in the heart of man.”

On truth

“There as here, passions are the motive of all action, but they are livelier, more ardent, or merely simpler and purer, thereby assuming a totally different character. All the first movements of nature are good and right.”