Jean-Jacques Rousseau

As long as there are rich people in the world, they will be desirous of distinguishing themselves from the poor.

The English think they are free. They are free only during the election of members of parliament.

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.

Insults are the arguments employed by those who are in the wrong.

The English people believes itself to be free; it is gravely mistaken; it is free only during election of members of parliament; as soon as the members are elected, the people is enslaved; it is nothing. In the brief moment of its freedom, the English people makes such a use of that freedom that it deserves to lose it.

To renounce freedom is to renounce one's humanity, one's rights as a man and equally one's duties.

There is no evildoer who could not be made good for something.

I may not be better than other people, but at least I'm different.

The man who gets the most out of life is not the one who has lived it longest, but the one who has felt life most deeply.

The English are predisposed to pride, the French to vanity.

All of my misfortunes come from having thought too well of my fellows.

At length I recollected the thoughtless saying of a great princess, who, on being informed that the country people had no bread, replied, "Let them eat cake".

For, as I think I have said, I can only meditate when I am walking. When I stop I cease to think; my mind only works with my legs.

No true believer could be intolerant or a persecutor. If I were a magistrate and the law carried the death penalty against atheists, I would begin by sending to the stake whoever denounced another.

Happiness: a good bank account, a good cook, and a good digestion.

One must choose between making a man or a citizen, for one cannot make both at the same time.

There are times when I am so unlike myself that I might be taken for someone else of an entirely opposite character.

Those that are most slow in making a promise are the most faithful in the performance of it.

I had been brought up in a church which decides everything and permits no doubts, so that having rejected one article of faith I was forced to reject the rest.

Every man has the right to risk his own life in order to preserve it. Has it ever been said that a man who throws himself out the window to escape from a fire is guilty of suicide?

Frequent punishments are always a sign of weakness or laziness on the part of a government.