Nature made me happy and good, and if I am otherwise, it is society’s fault.
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAUMan’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.
More Jean-Jacques Rousseau Quotes
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A taste for ostentation is rarely associated in the same souls with a taste for honesty.
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It is too difficult to think nobly when one thinks only of earning a living.
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Truth is an homage that the good man pays to his own dignity.
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There are times when I am so unlike myself that I might be taken for someone else of an entirely opposite character.
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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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Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains. Those who think themselves the masters of others are indeed greater slaves than they.
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Civilization is a hopeless race to discover remedies for the evils it produces.
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If we assume man has been corrupted by an artificial civilization, what is the natural state? the state of nature from which he has been removed? imagine, wandering up and down the forest without industry, without speech, and without home.
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He who pretends to look on death without fear lies. All men are afraid of dying, this is the great law of sentient beings, without which the entire human species would soon be destroyed.
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The social pact, far from destroying natural equality, substitutes, on the contrary, a moral and lawful equality for whatever physical inequality that nature may have imposed on mankind; so that however unequal in strength and intelligence, men become equal by covenant and by right.
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To do is to be.
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What, then, is the government? An intermediary body established between the subjects and the sovereign for their mutual communication, a body charged with the execution of the laws and the maintenance of freedom, both civil and political.
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To renounce liberty is to renounce being a man, to surrender the rights of humanity and even its duties.
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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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Everything is good as it comes from the hands of the Maker of the world, but degenerates once it gets into the hands of man
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU