Jean-Jacques Rousseau Quotes

Every man has a right to risk his own life for the preservation of it.

Doesn't the fight for survival also justify swindle and theft? In self defence, anything goes.

And by a prudent flight and cunning save A life which valour could not, from the grave. A better buckler I can soon regain, But who can get another life again?

Hey, any time you're throwing bodies over board it is to save yourself.

Necessity makes an honest man a knave.

One of the eternal rights is the individual’s right to live. The strongest of all instincts—self preservation—is an assertion of that right.

The thriller protagonist is really just us in extremis. He or she is this individual who is placed under enormous pressure, has huge moral dilemmas and decisions to make.

God orders a man to do all he can to save his life.

Never sacrifice your life for anything! Sacrifice everything for life! Life is the ultimate goal.

Could I betray my absent heart to save my pathetic life?

Why would I strike America and invite a retaliatory counterstrike that would put an end to my regime? Keep in mind, the whole point of this - my entire strategy, all our efforts and the hardships we have borne - is to ensure that my regime and I survive. Why would I risk that? I believe in assassination, not suicide.

Words save our lives, sometimes.

You can't kill us all, human.' He was right. I raised the machine gun a little. 'True, but who's going to be first in line?

Knowing what [Christ] knew , knowing all about mankind--ah! who would have thought that the crime is not so much to make others die, but to die oneself--confronted day and night with his innocent crime, it became too difficult to go on. It was better to get it over with, to not defend himself, to die, in order not to be the only one to have survived, and to go elsewhere, where, perhaps, he would be supported.

When a person is born, he can embark on only one of three roads of life: if you go right, the wolves will eat you; if you go left, you’ll eat the wolves; if you go straight, you’ll eat yourself.

It's better for one to die than for all of us to be killed in a shooting affray. Anyway, we've practically no ammunition.

If man is not ready to risk his life, where is his dignity?

I am proud to be part of a species where a subset of its members willingly put their lives at risk to push the boundaries of our existence.

How much 'ego' do you need? Just enough so that you don't step in front of a bus.

Most men expose themselves in battle enough to save their honor, few wish to do so more than sufficiently, or than is necessary to make the design for which they expose themselves succeed.

If you can't save your own life, is it even worth saving?

Many who would not take the last cookie would take the last lifeboat.

He who retreats lives longer.

At that time I had not yet been taught the doctrine I was later to learn so hurriedly in the Lager: that man is bound to pursue his own ends by all possible means, while he who errs but once pays dearly