Nothing is less in our power than the heart, and far from commanding we are forced to obey it.

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.

Quit thy childhood, my friend, and wake up!

It is too difficult to think nobly when one thinks only of earning a living.

People in their natural state are basically good. But this natural innocence,however, is corrupted by the evils of society.

By doing good we become good.

The social pact, far from destroying natural equality, substitutes, on the contrary, a moral and lawful equality for whatever physical inequality that nature may have imposed on mankind; so that however unequal in strength and intelligence, men become equal by covenant and by right.