Although modesty is natural to man, it is not natural to children. Modesty only begins with the knowledge of evil.

Never did I think so much, exist so much, be myself so much as in the journeys I have made alone and on foot. Walking has something about it which animates and enlivens my ideas. I can hardly think while I am still; my body must be in motion to move my mind.

One thinks himself the master of others, and still remains a greater slave than they.

We pity in others only the those evils which we ourselves have experienced.

One must choose between making a man or a citizen, for one cannot make both at the same time.

At sixteen, the adolescent knows about suffering because he himself has suffered, but he barely knows that other beings also suffer.

In the strict sense of the term, a true democracy has never existed, and never will exist.