Liberty is not to be found in any form of government; she is in the heart of the free man; he bears her with him everywhere.

The mechanism she employs is much more powerful than ours, for all her levers move the human heart.

Whence do I get my rules of conduct? I find them in my heart. Whatever I feel to be good is good. Whatever I feel to be evil is evil. Conscience is the best of casuists.

A citizen should render to the state all the services he can as soon as the sovereign demands them.

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.

Why should we build our happiness on the opinons of others, when we can find it in our own hearts?

Jewish authors would never have invented either that style nor that morality; and the Gospel has marks of truth so great, so striking, so utterly inimitable, that the invention of it would be more astonishing than the hero.