Patience patience quotes is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.
Jean-Jacques RousseauRead
At length I recollected the thoughtless saying of a great princess, who, on being informed that the country people had no bread, replied, "Let them eat cake".
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote highlights the disconnect between the elite and the struggles of the common people.
This quote by Jean-Jacques Rousseau reflects the idea of indifference among those in power towards the hardships faced by the less fortunate. The phrase, often attributed to Marie Antoinette, symbolizes a level of ignorance or naivety, suggesting that the upper class is unaware of the dire situations that ordinary people endure, and thus responds with an impractical or dismissive suggestion.
Themes
DisconnectionPrivilegeIndifferenceClassStruggle
In practice
Example use cases
During a lecture on social justice, this quote can be used to illustrate the gap between societal classes.
More from Jean-Jacques Rousseau
All quotes βThe infant, on opening his eyes, ought to see his country, and to the hour of his death never lose sight of it.
Jean-Jacques RousseauRead
What wisdom can you find that is greater than kindness?
Jean-Jacques RousseauRead
O love, if I regret the age when one savors you, it is not for the hour of pleasure, but for the one that follows it.
Jean-Jacques RousseauRead
Those people who treat politics and morality separately will never understand either of them.
Jean-Jacques RousseauRead
As evening approached, I came down from the heights of the island, and I liked then to go and sit on the shingle in some secluded spot by the lake; there the noise of the waves and the movement of the water, taking hold of my senses and driving all other agitation from my soul, would plunge me into delicious reverie in which night often stole upon me unawares.
Jean-Jacques RousseauRead
Similar quotes
We live on the brink of disaster because we do not know how to let life alone. We do not respect the living and fruitful contradictions and paradoxes of which true life is full.
Thomas MertonRead
Let him who wants a true church cling to the Word by which everything is upheld.
Martin LutherRead
A church is a place in which gentlemen who have never been to Heaven brag about it to persons who will never get there.
H. L. MenckenRead
The lives of individuals of the human race form a constant plot, in which every attempt to isolate one piece of living that has a meaning separate from the rest-for example, the meeting of two people, which will become decisive for both-must bear in mind that each of the two brings with himself a texture of events, environments, other people, and that from the meeting, in turn, other stories will be derived which will break off from their common story.
Italo CalvinoRead
The only power deserving the name is that of masses, and of governments while they make themselves the organ of the tendencies and instincts of masses.
John Stuart MillRead
The moment you venture out, something takes place in you and about you. Life comes to your aid in various ways. You may not like the form in which it comes to you - it may be misery, struggle, starvation - but when you invite life, things begin to happen.
Jiddu KrishnamurtiRead