The first man, who, after enclosing a piece of ground, took it into his head to say, This is mine, and found people simple enough to believe him, was the true founder of civil society.
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAUThe first man, who, after enclosing a piece of ground, took it into his head to say, This is mine, and found people simple enough to believe him, was the true founder of civil society.
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAUIn 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.
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAUThe 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.
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAUIn respect of riches, no citizen shall ever be wealthy enough to buy another, and none poor enough to be forced to sell himself.
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAUTruth is an homage that the good man pays to his own dignity.
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAUTo write a good love letter, you ought to begin without knowing what you mean to say, and to finish without knowing what you have written.
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAUI prefer liberty with danger than peace with slavery.
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAUMy love for imaginary objects and my facility in lending myself to them ended by disillusioning me with everything around me, and determined that love of solitude which I have retained ever since that time.
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAUThe imagination which causes so many ravages among us, never speaks to the heart of savages.
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAUIf 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.
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAUMAN is born free; and everywhere he is in chains. One thinks himself the master of others, and still remains a greater slave than they.
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAUIn any real democracy, magistracy isn’t a benefit—it’s a burdensome responsibility that can’t fairly be imposed on one individual rather than another.
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAUCivilization is a hopeless race to discover remedies for the evils it produces.
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAUBut in some great souls, who consider themselves as citizens of the world, and forcing the imaginary barriers that separate people from people.
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAUThose that are most slow in making a promise are the most faithful in the performance of it.
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAUMy birth was my first misfortune.
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU