Jean-Jacques Rousseau Quotes

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.

In respect of riches, no citizen shall ever be wealthy enough to buy another, and none poor enough to be forced to sell himself.

Oh, man! Live your own life and no longer be wretched!

Civilization is a hopeless race to discover remedies for the evils it produces.

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.

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.