Jean-Jacques Rousseau

I answer that I am neither, and that is why I do so.

I have entered upon a performance which is without example, whose accomplishment will have no imitator.

Slaves lose everything in their chains, even the desire of escaping from them: they love their servitude, as the comrades of Ulysses loved their brutish condition.

Ye curious readers, whose expectations are already on the stretch for the noble history of the terrace, listen to the tragedy, and abstain from trembling, if you can, at the horrible catastrophe!

All power comes from God, I admit; but so does all sickness: does that mean that we are forbidden to call in the doctor?

Flattery, or rather condescension, is not always a vice in young people; ‘tis oftener a virtue.

To renounce liberty is to renounce being a man, to surrender the rights of humanity and even its duties.

Her moderation, compared to my positive tone, did her an injury; as it did not appear natural to suppose, on one side such diabolical assurance; on the other, such angelic mildness.

The conjuring tricks of our political theorists are very like that; they first dismember the body politic by an illusion worthy of a fair, and then join it together again we know not how.

A sentiment takes possession of my soul with the rapidity of lightning, but instead of illuminating, it dazzles and confounds me; I feel all, but see nothing; I am warm, but stupid; to think I must be cool.

Frequent pardons mean that crime will soon need them no longer, and no one can help seeing whither that leads.

Having found so many good people in my youth, why do I find so few in my age?

It would take gods to give men laws.

If I would paint the spring, it must be in winter; if describe a beautiful landscape, it must be while surrounded with walls;

Liberty may be gained, but can never be recovered.

I was not pleased with this method of performing operations by rule without knowing what I was about: resolving geometrical problems by the help of equations seemed like playing a tune by turning round a handle.

It is precisely because the force of circumstances tends continually to destroy equality that the force of legislation should always tend to its maintenance.

I may omit facts, transpose events, and fall into some errors of dates; but I cannot be deceived in what I have felt, nor in that which from sentiment I have done; and to relate this is the chief end of my present work.

Were there a people of gods, their government would be democratic. So perfect a government is not for men.

So true is it that men are more attached to women by a certain pleasure they have in living with them, than by any kind of libertinism.