Philosophy Quote by Jean-Jacques Rousseau — Inspiring Words on Life, Love & Wisdom

“People in their natural state are basically good. But this natural innocence, however, is corrupted by the evils of society.”

“The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying”

“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 sentiment of our existence. The man who has lived the most is not he who has counted the most years but he who has most felt life.”

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

“I believed that I was approaching the end of my days without having tasted to the full any of the pleasures for which my heart thirsted...without having ever tasted that passion which, through lack of an object, was always suppressed. ...The impossibility of attaining the real persons precipitated me into the land of chimeras; and seeing nothing that existed worthy of my exalted feelings, I fostered them in an ideal world which my creative imagination soon peopled with beings after my own heart.”

“Live to revel in just another twilight. Life may sink and disappear along with the sunset never to rise again”

“Irreverence is a most necessary ingredient of religion. Not to speak of its importance in philosophy. Irreverence is the only way left to us for testing our universe.”

“Septimus has been working too hard" - that was all she could say to her own mother. To love makes one solitary, she thought.”

“There are two mindsets people tend to have: explorer or settler. Our society has a “settler” mindset, our end goals are “finalizing” (home, marriage, career, etc.) in a world that was made for evolution, in selves that do nothing but grow and expand and change. People with “explorer” mindsets are able to actually enjoy what they have and experience it fully because they are inherently unattached”

“In short, philosophical theories are largely the product of the hidden hand of the cognitive unconscious.”

“The man who alters his way of thinking to suit others is a fool.”