Plants are shaped by cultivation and men by education. .. We are born weak, we need strength; we are born totally unprovided, we need aid; we are born stupid, we need judgment. Everything we do not have at our birth and which we need when we are grown is given us by education.

Ordinary readers, forgive my paradoxes: one must make them when one reflects; and whatever you may say, I prefer being a man with paradoxes than a man with prejudices.

Many men, seemingly impelled by fortune, hasten forward to meet misfortune half way.

Childhood has it's own way of seeing, thinking, and feeling, and nothing is more foolish than to try to substitute ours for theirs.

We can never put ourselves in the shoes of children; we cannot fathom their thoughts, we lend them ours; and always following ourown reasoning, we stuff their heads with extravagance and error.

The members of a body-politic call it "the state" when it is passive, "the sovereign" when it is active, and a "power" when they compare it with others of its kind. Collectively they use the title "people," and they refer to one another individually as "citizens" when speaking of their participation in the authority of the sovereign, and as "subjects" when speaking of their subordination to the laws of the state.

Base souls have no faith in great individuals.