To discover the rules of society that are best suited to nations, there would need to exist a superior intelligence, who could understand the passions of men without feeling any of them, who had no affinity with our nature but knew it to the full, whose happiness was independent of ours, but who would nevertheless make our happiness his concern, who would be content to wait in the fullness of time for a distant glory, and to labour in one age to enjoy the fruits in another. Gods would be needed to give men laws.

I don't know what is truth,but I can tell you how to find it!

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

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

Definitions would be good things if we did not use words to make them.

Universal silence is taken to imply the consent of the people.

The political body, therefore, is also a moral being which has a will; and this general will, which tends always to the conservation and well-being of the whole and of each part of it ... is, for all members of the state ... the rule of what is just or unjust.