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.
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAUPeople who know little are usually great talkers, while men who know much say little.
More Jean-Jacques Rousseau Quotes
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The people of England regards itself as free; but it is grossly mistaken; it is free only during the election of members of parliament. As soon as they are elected, slavery overtakes it, and it is nothing.
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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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My birth was my first misfortune.
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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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A taste for ostentation is rarely associated in the same souls with a taste for honesty.
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Truth is an homage that the good man pays to his own dignity.
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To be sane in a world of madman is in itself madness.
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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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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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Oh, man! Live your own life and no longer be wretched!
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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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I am a hundred times happier in my solitude than I could be if I lived among them.
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Every artists wants to be applauded
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I would rather be a man of paradoxes than a man of prejudices.
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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