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

The general will is always right.

Provided a man is not mad, he can be cured of every folly but vanity.

The abuse of books kills science. Believing that we know what we have read, we believe that we can dispense with learning it.

It is not our criminal actions that require courage to confess, but those which are ridiculous and foolish.

Self-love is an instrument useful but dangerous; it often wounds the hand which makes use of it, and seldom does good without doing harm.

Equality is deemed by many a mere speculative chimera, which can never be reduced to practice. But if the abuse is inevitable, does it follow that we ought not to try at least to mitigate it? It is precisely because the force of things tends always to destroy equality that the force of the legislature must always tend to maintain it.