The truths of the Scriptures are so marked and inimitable, that the inventor would be more of a miraculous character than the hero.

Ought to have a universal compulsory force to move and arrange each part in the manner best suited to the whole. Just as nature gives each man an absolute power over all his members, the social compact gives the body politic an absolute power over all its members." "We grant that each person alienates, by the social compact, only that portion of his power, his goods, and liberty whose use is of consequence to the community; but we must also grant that only the sovereign is the judge of what is of consequence.

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

O love, if I regret the age when one savors you, it is not for the hour of pleasure, but for the one that follows it.

From the first moment of life, men ought to begin learning to deserve to live; and, as at the instant of birth we partake of the rights of citizenship, that instant ought to be the beginning of the exercise of our duty.

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.

It is a mania shared by philosophers of all ages to deny what exists and to explain what does not exist.