Jean-Jacques Rousseau

There is, I am sensible, an age at which every individual of you would choose to stop; and you will look out for the age at which, had you your wish, your species had stopped. Uneasy at your present condition for reasons which threaten your unhappy posterity with still greater uneasiness, you will perhaps wish it were in your power to go back; and this sentiment ought to be considered, as the panegyric of your first parents, the condemnation of you contemporaries, and a source of terror to all those who may have the misfortune of succeeding you.

çocuğun yüreğinde ise etkinlik adamakıllı boldur ve dışarıya yayılır; çocuk kendisini çevreleyen her şeyi canlandırmak için sanki yeterince yaşam dolu olduğunu hisseder. Yapsın ya da bozsun, önemi yoktur; şeylerin durumunu değiştirmesi yeterlidir ve her değişiklik bir etkinliktir. Yıkmaya, yok etmeye karşı daha çok eğilimi varmış gibi görünse de, bu hiç de kötülük yüzünden değildir, çünkü oluşturan eylem her zaman yavaştır, yıkan, yok eden eylem daha çabuk olduğu için canlılığına daha uygundur.

Every artists wants to be applauded

Could integrity be the daughter of ignorance? Could knowledge and virtue be incompatible? What consequences could we not draw from these opinions? But to reconcile these apparent contradictions, it is necessary only to examine closely the vanity and the emptiness of those proud titles which dazzle us and which we hand out so gratuitously to human learning.

The money which a man possesses is the instrument of freedom; that which we eagerly pursue is the instrument of slavery. Therefore I hold fast to that which I have, and desire nothing.

It is a great and beautiful spectacle to see a man somehow emerging from oblivion by his own efforts, dispelling with the light of his reason the shadows in which nature had enveloped him, rising above himself, soaring in his mind right up to the celestial regions, moving, like the sun, with giant strides through the vast extent of the universe, and, what is even greater and more difficult, returning to himself in order to study man there and learn of his nature, his obligations, and his end.

I have never believed that man’s freedom consists in doing what he wants, but rather in never doing what he does not want to do, and this is the freedom I have always sought after and often achieved, the freedom by virtue of which I have most scandalized my contemporaries. For they, being active, busy, ambitious, detesting freedom in others and not desiring it for themselves, as long as they can sometimes have their way, or rather prevent others from having theirs, they force themselves all their lives to do what they do not want to do and are willing to endure any servitude in order to command

A child who passes through many hands in turn, can never be well brought up. At every change he makes a secret comparison, which continually tends to lessen his respect for those who control him, and with it their authority over him. If once he thinks there are grown-up people with no more sense than children the authority of age is destroyed and his education is ruined.

In giving too much weight to prudence one doesn’t make enough allowance for the possibility of good luck.

Les gens qui passent exactement la vie entière à travailler pour vivre n'ont d'autre idée que celle de leur travail ou de leur intérêt, et tout leur esprit semble être au bout de leurs bras.

Si queremos formar una institución duradera, no pensemos en hacerla eterna

las fatigas y el agotamiento espiritual, los pesares y contrariedades que se sienten en todas las situaciones, los cuales corroen perpetuamente el alma: he ahí las pruebas funestas de que la mayor parte de nuestros males son obra nuestra,

Real wisdom is not the knowledge of everything, but the knowledge of which things in life are necessary, which are less necessary, and which are completely unnecessary to know. Among the most necessary knowledge is the knowledge of how to live well, that is, how to produce the least possible evil and the greatest goodness in one’s life. At present, people study useless sciences, but forget to study this, the most important knowledge.

إنه لمنظر جميل وجليل أن ترى الإنسان يرفع نفسه من العدم بجهده الخاص ، ويبدد، بنور عقله ، تلك الظلمات التي لفته بها الطبيعة ، إنه ليرفع نفسه فوق نفسه ، وينفذ بروحه إلى أطباق السماء وينطلق كالشمس بخطوات جبارة عبر الفضاء الشاسع للكون . روسو / مقال عن الفنون والعلوم

My illusions about the world caused me to think that in order to benefit by my reading I ought to possess all the knowledge the book presupposed. I was very far indeed from imagining that often the author did not possess it himself, but had extracted it from other books, as and when he needed it. This foolish conviction forced me to stop every moment, and to rush incessantly from one book to another; sometimes before coming to the tenth page of the one I was trying to read I should, by this extravagant method, have had to run through whole libraries. Nevertheless I stuck to it so persistently that I wasted infinite time, and my head became so confused that I could hardly see or take in anything.