"If there were a nation of Gods, it would govern itself democratically. A government so perfect is not suited to men."

"I am not made like any of those I have seen. I venture to believe that I am not made like any of those who are in existence. If I am not better, at least I am different."

"Do I dare set forth here the most important, the most useful rule of all education? It is not to save time, but to squander it."

"Nature never deceives us; it is we who deceive ourselves."

"If the life and death of Socrates were those of a sage the life and death of Jesus were those of a God."

"The sword wears out its sheath, as it is sometimes said. That is my story. My passions have made me live, and my passions have killed me. What passions, it may be asked. Trifles, the most childish things in the world. Yet they affected me as much as if the possessions of Helen, or the throne of the Universe, had been at stake."

"From this moment there would be no question of virtue or morality; for despotism cui ex honesto nulla est spes, wherever it prevails, admits no other master; it no sooner speaks than probity and duty lose their weight and blind obedience is the only virtue which slaves can still practice."

"Little privations are easily endured when the heart is better treated than the body."

"Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet."

"Insults are the arguments employed by those who are in the wrong."

"But in some great souls, who consider themselves as citizens of the world, and forcing the imaginary barriers that separate people from people..."

"Gratitude is a duty which ought to be paid, but which none have a right to expect."

"Those that are most slow in making a promise are the most faithful in the performance of it."

"Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains."

"I have always said and felt that true enjoyment can not be described."

"I am not worried about pleasing clever minds or fashionable people. In every period there will be men fated to be governed by the opinions of their century, their country, and their society. For that very reason, a freethinker or philosopher today would have been nothing but a fanatic at the time of the League.* One must not write for such readers, if one wishes to live beyond one's own age."

"We should not teach children the sciences; but give them a taste for them."

"Laws are always useful to those who possess and vexatious to those who have nothing."

"Force does not constitute right... obedience is due only to legitimate powers."

"I would rather be a man of paradoxes than a man of prejudices."

"However great a man's natural talent may be, the act of writing cannot be learned all at once."

"Our will is always for our own good, but we do not always see what that is."

"Base souls have no faith in great individuals."

"Why should we build our happiness on the opinons of others, when we can find it in our own hearts?"

"A taste for ostentation is rarely associated in the same souls with a taste for honesty."

"To renounce freedom is to renounce one's humanity, one's rights as a man and equally one's duties."

"God made me and broke the mold."

"It is unnatural for a majority to rule, for a majority can seldom be organized and united for specific action, and a minority can."

"I say to myself: "Who are you to measure infinite power?"

"Ordinary readers, forgive my paradoxes: one must make them when one reflects; and whatever you may say, I prefer being a man with paradoxes than a man with prejudices."

"Childhood is the sleep of reason."

"I hear from afar the shouts of that false wisdom which is ever dragging us onwards, counting the present as nothing, and pursuing without pause a future which flies as we pursue, that false wisdom which removes us from our place and never brings us to any other."

"All that time is lost which might be better employed."

"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."

"No man has any natural authority over his fellow men."

"Every man having been born free and master of himself, no one else may under any pretext whatever subject him without his consent. To assert that the son of a slave is born a slave is to assert that he is not born a man."

"The first man who, having fenced in a piece of land, said "This is mine," and found people naA ve enough to believe him, that man was the true founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars, and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows: Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody."

"We are born, so to speak, twice over; born into existence, and born into life; born a human being, and born a man."

"Hatred, as well as love, renders its votaries credulous."

"Absolute silence leads to sadness. It is the image of death."

"Take from the philosopher the pleasure of being heard and his desire for knowledge ceases."

"I undertake the same project as Montaigne, but with an aim contrary to his own: for he wrote his Essays only for others, and I write my reveries only for myself."

"How many famous and high-spirited heroes have lived a day too long?"

"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. How many crimes, how many wars, how many murders, how many misfortunes and horrors, would that man have saved the human species, who pulling up the stakes or filling up the ditches should have cried to his fellows: Be sure not to listen to this imposter; you are lost, if you forget that the fruits of the earth belong equally to us all, and the earth itself to nobody!"

"Are your principles not engraved in all hearts, and in order to learn your laws is it not enough to go back into oneself and listen to the voice of one's conscience in the silence of the passions? There you have true philosophy. Let us learn to be satisfied with that, and without envying the glory of those famous men who are immortalized in the republic of letters, let us try to set between them and us that glorious distinction which people made long ago between two great peoples: one knew how to speak well; the other how to act well."

"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."

"He who is the most slow in making a promise is the most faithful in the performance of it."

"There is not a single ill-doer who could not be turned to some good."

"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."

"Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains."