Jean-Jacques Rousseau Quotes

We can all become better than we are.

Humanity unceasingly strives forward from a lower, more partial and obscure understanding of life to one more general and more lucid.

Progress is man's ability to complicate simplicity.

I have not the slightest doubt that this form of individuation represents a higher stage in the evolution of mankind.

Contemporary thinkers would say that man is continuously transcending himself.

We can take some gratification at having come a certain distance in just a few thousand years of our existence as language users, but it should be a deeper satisfaction, even an exhilaration, to recognize that we have such a distance still to go.

I'm learning all the time. I'm evolving all the time as a human being. I'm getting better, I hope, in all of the important ways.

So we can't go backwards, we can only go where the evolutionary trajectory is taking us and attune our ideas about ourselves and our existence to that course.

I am never interested in the individual, but in the human species and its environment.

A consciousness of history is one of the key factors that distinguishes us from other animals.

Man is said to be a reasoning animal. I do not know why he has not been defined as an affective or feeling animal. Perhaps that which differentiates him from other animals is feeling rather than reason

For our improvement we need a mirror.

I would much rather be a perfected ape than a degraded Adam. Yes, if it is shown to me that my humble ancestors were quadrupedal animals, arboreal herbivores, brothers or cousins of those who were also the ancestors of monkeys and apes, far from blushing in shame for my species because of its genealogy and parentage, I will be proud of all that evolution has accomplished, of the continuous improvement which takes us up to the highest order, of the successive triumphs that have made us superior to all of the other species ... the splendid work of progress.

That which lies before the human race is a constant struggle to maintain and improve

The way we like to think of ourselves is not the way we look. We like to think of ourselves as more evolved than we frequently are.

How am I different than anyone else? I'm a human being, and I have my faults, too.

Existence loves laughter. You may have observed, or not, that man is the only animal in the whole of existence who is capable of laughing. Laughter is the only distinguishing mark that you are not a buffalo, you are not a donkey; you are a human being. Laughter defines your humanity and your evolution. And the greatest laugh is at your own ridiculous things.

Who are we? That is the big question. And essentially we are just an upright-walking, big-brained, super-intelligent ape.

Reason is man's faculty for grasping the world by thought, in contradiction to intelligence, which is man's ability to manipulate the world with the help of thought. Reason is man's instrument for arriving at the truth, intelligence is man's instrument for manipulating the world more successfully; the former is essentially human, the latter belongs to the animal part of man.

Just as true humor is laughter at oneself, true humanity is knowledge of oneself.

I worry that humanity has been "advanced" to its present level of incompetency because evolution works on the Peter Principle.

Perfectibility is one of the most unequivocal characteristics of the human species.

Our problem is to become acquainted with our own selves, letting our personalities loose upon the world for the sheer adventure of their full development and in the positive hope that they may in their own way lift the level of humanity.

Life did not intend to make us perfect. Whoever is perfect belongs in a museum.

But it is the knowledge of necessary and eternal truths which distinguishes us from mere animals, and gives us reason and the sciences, raising us to knowledge of ourselves and God. It is this in us which we call the rational soul or mind.