Jean-Jacques Rousseau 1712 – 1778
Jean-Jacques Rousseau was an 18th-century Genevan philosopher, writer, and composer whose work profoundly influenced political theory, education, literature, and the French Revolution. The Social Contract opens with his famous declaration that man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains, and develops a theory of legitimate political authority grounded in the general will. Emile presented a sweeping theory of education centered on the natural development of the child. His autobiographical Confessions inaugurated a new genre of frank self-disclosure in literature. Rousseau's thought stands at the headwaters of both modern democratic political theory and Romanticism.
Key facts
- Nationality
- Genevan
- Era
- Modern
- Movements
- Enlightenment, Social Contract
Selected quotes
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Attributed to Jean-Jacques Rousseau:
“Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.”
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Attributed to Jean-Jacques Rousseau:
“I prefer liberty with danger to peace with slavery.”
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Attributed to Jean-Jacques Rousseau:
“Plants are shaped by cultivation and men by education.”
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Attributed to Jean-Jacques Rousseau:
“The strongest is never strong enough to be always the master, unless he transforms strength into right, and obedience into duty.”
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Attributed to Jean-Jacques Rousseau:
“To renounce liberty is to renounce being a man, to surrender the rights of humanity and even its duties.”
Quotes that are not actually from Jean-Jacques Rousseau
These lines are widely circulated as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, but they do not appear in Jean-Jacques Rousseau's works. Each entry below identifies the actual source.
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“Insults are the arguments employed by those who are in the wrong.”
This sentence is widely circulated as Rousseau but has not been located in his major works or correspondence. The actual source has not been identified; the line appears to be a 20th-century English-language attribution.