Jean Jacques Rousseau

He who is slowest in making a promise is most faithful in its performance.

Never exceed your rights, and they will soon become unlimited.

Good laws lead to the making of better ones; bad ones bring about worse.

Happiness: a good bank account, a good cook and a good digestion.

The happiest is the person who suffers the least pain; the most miserable who enjoys the least pleasure.

Your first appearance, he said to me, is the gauge by which you will be measured; try to manage that you may go beyond yourself in after times, but beware of ever doing less.

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

Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains.

The person who has lived the most is not the one with the most years but the one with the richest experiences.

One loses all the time which he might employ to better purpose.

Falsehood has an infinity of combinations, but truth has only one mode of being.

Nature never deceives us; it is we who deceive ourselves.

Virtue is a state of war, and to live in it we have always to combat with ourselves.

The training of children is a profession, where we must know how to waste time in order to save it

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

God makes all things good; man meddles with them and they become evil.

As soon as any man says of the affairs of the State "What does it matter to me?" the State may be given up for lost.

To renounce liberty is to renounce being a man, to surrender the rights of humanity and even its duties. For he who renounces everything no indemnity is possible. Such a renunciation is incompatible with man's nature; to remove all liberty from his will is to remove all morality from his acts.

Society's institutions, like government, schools, the arts, and the media, corrupt naturally good individuals.