In truth, laws are always useful to those with possessions and harmful to those who have nothing; from which it follows that the social state is adva… - Jean-Jacques Rousseau
""
In truth, laws are always useful to those with possessions and harmful to those who have nothing; from which it follows that the social state is advantageous to men only when all possess something and none has too much.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (June 28, 1712 – July 2, 1778) was a major French-speaking Genevan philosopher of Enlightenment whose political ideas influenced the French Revolution, the development of socialist theory, and the growth of nationalism.
Biography information from
Wikiquote·
Portrait adapted from
Wikimedia Commons, Maurice Quentin de La Tour (Public domain / CC0)
Also Known As
Alternative Names:
Citizen of Geneva
•
Jean Jacques Rousseau
•
J. J. Rousseau
•
Rousseau
•
J.J. Rousseau
•
JJ Rousseau
To be driven by our appetites alone is slavery, while to obey a law that we have imposed on ourselves is freedom.
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.
PREMIUM FEATURE
Advanced Search Filters
Filter search results by source, date, and more with our premium search tools.
What do I have to fear from them now that everything is over? Since they can no longer make things any worse for me, they can no longer frighten me. Anxiety and terror are ills from which they have delivered me for ever: this is real relief for me. Real ills have little hold over me; I deal easily with those that I actually experience, but not with those that I fear. My fevered imagination adds them together, turns them over and over, draws them out and increases them. The expectation of them tortures me a hundred times more than their actual presence, and the threat of them is far worse than the blow itself. As soon as they happen, the experience of them strips them of their imagined aura and cuts them down to their true size.
