Do to others as you would have others do to you, inspires all men with that other maxim of natural goodness a great deal less perfect, but perhaps more useful: Do good to yourself with as little prejudice as you can to others.
Jean-Jacques RousseauOne may live tranquilly in a dungeon; but does life consist in living quietly?
Jean-Jacques RousseauGreat men never make bad use of their superiority. They see it and feel it and are not less modest. The more they have, the more they know their own deficiencies.
Jean-Jacques RousseauThe 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.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau