That man is truly free who desires what he is able to perform, and does what he desires.

The French painter Rousseau was once asked why he put a naked woman on a red sofa in the middle of his jungle pictures. He answered, 'I needed a bit of red there.'

I will say little of the importance of a good education; nor will I stop to prove that the current one is bad. Countless others have done so before me, and I do not like to fill a book with things everybody knows. I will note that for the longest time there has been nothing but a cry against the established practice without anyone taking it upon himself to propose a better one. The literature and the learning of our age tend much more to destruction than to edification.

It is in man's heart that the life of nature's spectacle exists; to see it, one must feel it.

That which renders life burdensome to us generally arises from the abuse of it.

The strength of the people is effective only if it is concentrated; it evaporates and is lost when it is dispersed, just as gunpowder scattered on the ground ignites only grain by grain.

Government originated in the attempt to find a form of association that defends and protects the person and property of each with the common force of all.