Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Although modesty is natural to man, it is not natural to children. Modesty only begins with the knowledge of evil.

However great a man's natural talent may be, the act of writing cannot be learned all at once.

Nature never deceives us; it is we who deceive ourselves.

I have resolved on an enterprise that has no precedent and will have no imitator. I want to set before my fellow human beings a man in every way true to nature; and that man will be myself.

We are born weak, we need strength; helpless, we need aid; foolish, we need reason. All that we lack at birth, all that we need when we come to man's estate, is the gift of education.

The body politic, as well as the human body, begins to die as soon as it is born, and carries itself the causes of its destruction.

The training of children is a profession, where we must know how to waste time in order to save it.

It is a mania shared by philosophers of all ages to deny what exists and to explain what does not exist.

Do I dare set forth here the most important, the most useful rule of all education? It is not to save time, but to squander it.

Absolute silence leads to sadness. It is the image of death.

The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless.