Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Every person has a right to risk their own life for the preservation of it.

The bounds of human possibility are not as confining as we think they are; they are made to seem to be tight by our weaknesses, our vices, our prejudices that confine them.

Teach your scholar to observe the phenomena of nature; you will soon rouse his curiosity, but if you would have it grow, do not be in too great a hurry to satisfy this curiosity. Put the problems before him and let him solve them himself. Let him know nothing because you have told him, but because he has learnt it for himself. Let him not be taught science, let him discover it. If ever you substitute authority for reason he will cease to reason; he will be a mere plaything of other people's thoughts.

We seek knowledge only because we desire enjoyment, and it is impossible to conceive why a person who has neither desires nor fears would take the trouble to reason.

Free people, remember this maxim: we may acquire liberty, but it is never recovered if it is once lost.

No man has any natural authority over his fellow men.

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

So finally we tumble into the abyss, we ask God why he has made us so feeble. But, in spite of ourselves, He replies through our consciences: 'I have made you too feeble to climb out of the pit, because i made you strong enough not to fall in.

The world of reality has its limits the world of imagination is boundless.

Plant and your spouse plants with you weed and you weed alone.

Base souls have no faith in great individuals.

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

Take from the philosopher the pleasure of being heard and his desire for knowledge ceases.

Although modesty is natural to man, it is not natural to children. Modesty only begins with the knowledge of evil.

Gratitude is a duty which ought to be paid, but which none have a right to expect.

Or, rather, let us be more simple and less vain.

Our will is always for our own good, but we do not always see what that is.

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.