People in their natural state are basically good. But this natural innocence,however, is corrupted by the evils of society.
Jean-Jacques RousseauTo renounce liberty is to renounce being a man, to surrender the rights of humanity and even its duties.
Jean-Jacques RousseauEverything is in constant flux on this earth. Nothing keeps the same unchanging shape, and our affections, being attached to things outside us, necessarily change and pass away as they do. Always out ahead of us or lagging behind, they recall a past which is gone or anticipate a future which may never come into being; there is nothing solid there for the heart to attach itself to. Thus our earthly joys are almost without exception the creatures of a moment.
Jean-Jacques RousseauEducation is either from nature, from man or from things. The developing of our faculties and organs is the education of nature; that of man is the application we learn to make of this very developing; and that of things is the experience we acquire in regard to the different objects by which we are affected. All that we have not at our birth, and that we stand in need of at the years of maturity, is the gift of education.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau