Jean-Jacques Rousseau

There are always two sides to everything.

I hate those who are always right and always wrong.

The greatest evil is not to be good, but to be bad when one has the power to be good.

What then is the proper object of education? It is to make a man fit to be a man.

It is not enough to be happy, one must also be useful.

The more I see of men, the more I admire dogs.

The history of nations is the history of human error.

The public good should be the object of the legislator.

The first man who, having fenced in a piece of land, said 'This is mine,' and found people naive enough to believe him, was the true founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars, and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows: Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody.

A woman's entire education should be planned in relation to men. To please men, to be useful to them, to make herself loved and honored by them, to raise them when young, to care for them when grown, to counsel them, to console them, to make their lives pleasant and happy—these are the duties of women for all time, and what should be taught them from childhood.

To renounce liberty is to renounce being a man, to surrender the rights of humanity and even its duties. For him who renounces everything there is no indemnity. Such a renunciation is incompatible with man's nature; to remove all liberty from his will is to remove all morality from his acts.

As soon as any man says of the affairs of the State 'What does it matter to me?' the State may be given up for lost.

To live is not to breathe but to act. It is to make use of our organs, our senses, our faculties, of all the parts of ourselves which give us the feeling of our existence. The man who has lived most is not he who has counted most years but he who has most felt life.

The greatest evils that befall man come from man himself.

The more I study men, the more I see the difference between them and other animals.

The most ancient of all societies, and the only one that is natural, is the family.

Nature has made me different from all other men. I alone know my heart, and I alone know men. He who dares to say that he is like me is a liar.

If there is any state in the world where a man can enjoy the full exercise of his faculties, it is the one where he is least dependent on others.

The bonds of society are formed by the common needs of men, and the common good of all is the end of society.

The rich, in order to live, must eat; the poor, in order to eat, must live.