Jean-Jacques Rousseau - The Social Contract (1762)

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Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
War then, is a relation - not between man and man but between state and state and individuals are enemies only accidentally not as men, nor even as citizens but as soldiers not as members of their country, but as its defenders

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Usurpers always bring about or select troublous times to get passed, under cover of the public terror, destructive laws, which the people would never adopt in cold blood. The moment chosen is one of the surest means of distinguishing the work of the legislator from that of the tyrant.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
One thinks himself the master of others, and still remains a greater slave than they.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
For no more by the law of reason than by the law of nature can anything occur without a cause.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Our will is always for our own good, but we do not always see what that is; the people is never corrupted, but it is often deceived, and on such occasions only does it seem to will what is bad.

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

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
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.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Sovereigns always see with pleasure a taste for the arts of amusement and superfluity, which do not result in the exportation of bullion, increase among their subjects. They very well know that, besides nourishing that littleness of mind which is proper to slavery, the increase of artificial wants only binds so many more chains upon the people.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
And when the relics of humanity left among the Spaniards induced them to forbid their lawyers to set foot in America, what must they have thought of jurisprudence? May it not be said that they thought, by this single expedient, to make reparation for all the outrages they had committed against the unhappy Indians?

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Every free action has two causes that come together to produce it. One is moral, the will that determines the act; the other is physical, the power that executes the will to act.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
The right of conquest has no foundation other than the right of the strongest.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
The problem is to find a form of association which will defend and protect with the whole common force the person and goods of each associate, and in which each, while uniting himself with all, may still obey himself alone, and remain as free as before.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
War is then not a relationship between one man and another, but a relationship between one State and another, in which individuals are enemies only by accident, not as men, nor even as citizens, but as soldiers; not as members of the fatherland, but as its defenders. Finally, any State can only have other States, and not men, as enemies, inasmuch as it is impossible to fix a true relation between things of different natures.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
The political body, therefore, is also a moral being which has a will; and this general will, which tends always to the conservation and well-being of the whole and of each part of it... is, for all members of the state... the rule of what is just or unjust.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Luxury either comes of riches or makes them necessary; it corrupts at once rich and poor, the rich by possession and the poor by covetousness.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Whoever refuses to obey the general will will be forced to do so by the entire body; this means merely that he will be forced to be free.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Each member of the community gives himself to it at the instant of its constitution, just as he actually is, himself and all his forces, including all goods in his possession.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
There is not a single ill-doer who could not be turned to some good.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
At Genoa, the word Liberty may be read over the front of the prisons and on the chains of the galley-slaves. This application of the device is good and just. It is indeed only malefactors of all estates who prevent the citizen from being free. In the country in which all such men were in the galleys, the most perfect liberty would be enjoyed.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Every man has the right to risk his own life in order to preserve it. Has it ever been said that a man who throws himself out the window to escape from a fire is guilty of suicide?

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
The more humanity owes him, the more society denies him. Every door is shut against him, even when he has a right to its being opened: and if he ever obtains justice, it is with much greater difficulty than others obtain favors.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Good laws lead to the making of better ones; bad ones bring about worse.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Those who think themselves the masters of others are indeed greater slaves than they.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
The very right to vote imposes on me the duty to instruct myself in public affair, however little influence my voice may have in them.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Slaves become so debased by their chains as to lose even the desire of breaking from them.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Slaves lose everything in their chains, even the desire of escaping from them.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
In the strict sense of the term, a true democracy has never existed, and never will exist. It is against natural order that the great number should govern and that the few should be governed.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
The strongest is never strong enough to be always the master, unless he transforms his strength into right, and obedience into duty.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
The body politic, like the human body, begins to die from its birth, and bears in itself the causes of its destruction.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau