We cannot teach children the danger of lying to men without feeling as men, the greater danger of lying to children.
From this it follows that, the larger the State, the less the liberty.
Since these conveniences by becoming habitual had almost entirely ceased to be enjoyable, and at the same time degenerated into true needs, it became much more cruel to be deprived of them than to possess them was sweet, and men were unhappy to lose them without being happy to possess them.
We may add that frequent punishments are always a sign of weakness or remissness on the part of the government. There is not a single ill-doer who could not be turned to some good. The State has no right to put to death, even for the sake of making an example, any one whom it can leave alive without danger.
Those who think themselves the masters of others are indeed greater slaves than they.
The desire to be better understood has been extinguished from my heart.
One advantage resulting from good actions is that they elevate the soul to a disposition of attempting still better; for such is human weakness, that we must place among our good deeds an abstinence from those crimes we are tempted to commit.
Self-esteem is the strongest incentive to elevated souls: self-pride, fertile in illusions, often disguises itself, and is mistaken for the former; but when once the fraud is discovered, the danger ceases; for though it is difficult to eradicate it entirely, it may easily be kept in subjection.
I will explain myself; but this will be to take the most useless, most superfluous precaution; for everything that I will tell you could only be understood by those who do not need to be told.
It frequently happens that a villainous action does not torment us the instant we commit it, but on recollection, and sometimes even after a number of years have elapsed, for the remembrance of crimes is not to be extinguished.
How many centuries must have elapsed before men reached the point of seeing any other fire than that in the sky?
If I had remained free, obscure, and alone placed in the situation Nature designed me for, I should have done nothing but what was right, for my heart bears not the feeds of any mischievous passion. Had I been invisible and powerful as the Almighty, I should have been benevolent and good like him: it is power and freedom that make good men, weakness and slavery never made any but wicked ones.
Man’s first language, the most universal, the most energetic and the only language he needed before it was necessary to persuade men assembled together, is the cry of nature.
Even if philosophers were in a position to discover truth, who among them would be interested in it? Each knows well that his system is not better founded than the others; but he supports it because it is his.
So much good my persecutors have done me by recklessly pouring out all the shafts of their hatred. They have deprived themselves of any power over me and henceforward I can laugh at them. It.
Doubt with regard to what we ought to know is a condition too violent for the human mind; it cannot long be endured; in spite of itself the mind decides one way or another, and it prefers to be deceived rather than to believe nothing.
How have a hundred men who wish for a master the right to vote on behalf of ten who do not? The law of majority voting is itself something established by convention, and presupposes unanimity, on one occasion at least. 6.
Virtue is a state of war, and to live in it means one always has some battle to wage against oneself.
I cannot repeat too often that to control the child one must often control oneself.
I believed in childhood by authority, in youth by sentiment, in my mature years by reason; now I believe because I have always believed.