Being wealthy isn’t just a question of having lots of money. It’s a question of what we want. Wealth isn’t an absolute, it’s relative to desire. Every time we seek something that we can’t afford, we can be counted as poor, how much money we may actually have.
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAUFrom this it follows that, the larger the State, the less the liberty.
More Jean-Jacques Rousseau Quotes
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I hate books; they only teach us to talk about things we know nothing about.
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If there is in this world a well-attested account, it is that of vampires. Nothing is lacking: official reports, affidavits of well-known people, of surgeons, of priests, of magistrates; the judicial proof is most complete. And with all that, who is there who believes in vampires?
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Man’s first law is to watch over his own preservation; his first care he owes to himself; and as soon as he reaches the age of reason, he becomes the only judge of the best means to preserve himself; he becomes his own master.
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Every artists wants to be applauded
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Those that are most slow in making a promise are the most faithful in the performance of it.
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If there were a nation of Gods, it would govern itself democratically. A government so perfect is not suited to men.
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The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying ‘this is mine’, and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society.
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I prefer liberty with danger than peace with slavery.
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If force compels obedience, there is no need to invoke a duty to obey, and if force ceases to compel obedience, there is no longer any obligation.
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The real world has its limits; the imaginary world is infinite. Unable to enlarge the one, let us restrict the other, for it is from the difference between the two alone that are born all the pains which make us truly unhappy.
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There is peace in dungeons, but is that enough to make dungeons desirable?
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MAN is born free; and everywhere he is in chains. One thinks himself the master of others, and still remains a greater slave than they.
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To do is to be.
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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.
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To live is not merely to breathe; it is to act; it is to make use of our organs, senses, faculties – of all those parts of ourselves which give us the feeling of existence.
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