“The social pact, far from destroying natural equality, substitutes, on the contrary, a moral and lawful equality for whatever physical inequality that nature may have imposed on mankind; so that however unequal in strength and intelligence, men become equal by covenant and by right.”

“ The spectacle of nature, by growing quite familiar to him, becomes at last equally indifferent. It is constantly the same order, constantly the same revolutions; he has not sense enough to feel surprise at the sight of the greatest wonders; and it is not in his mind we must look for that philosophy, which man must have to know how to observe once, what he has every day seen." Jean Jacques Rousseau, On the Inequality among Mankind, Ch. 1, 20.”

“To renounce freedom is to renounce one's humanity, one's rights as a man and equally one's duties.”

“However great a man's natural talent may be, the act of writing cannot be learned all at once.”

“In truth, laws are always useful to those with possessions and harmful to those who have nothing; from which it follows that the social state is advantageous to men only when all possess something and none has too much.”

“I have entered upon a performance which is without example, whoseaccomplishment will have no imitator. I mean to present myfellow-mortals with a man in all the integrity of nature; and this manshall be myself.I know my heart, and have studied mankind; I am not made like any one Ihave been acquainted with, perhaps like no one in existence; if notbetter, I at least claim originality, and whether Nature did wisely inbreaking the mould with which she formed me, can only be determined afterhaving read this work.Whenever the last trumpet shall sound, I will present myself before thesovereign judge with this book in my hand, and loudly proclaim, thus haveI acted; these were my thoughts; such was I. With equal freedom andveracity have I related what was laudable or wicked, I have concealed nocrimes, added no virtues; and if I have sometimes introduced superfluousornament, it was merely to occupy a void occasioned by defect of memory:I may have supposed that certain, which I only knew to be probable, buthave never asserted as truth, a conscious falsehood. Such as I was, Ihave declared myself; sometimes vile and despicable, at others, virtuous,generous and sublime; even as thou hast read my inmost soul: Powereternal! assemble round thy throne an innumerable throng of myfellow-mortals, let them listen to my confessions, let them blush at mydepravity, let them tremble at my sufferings; let each in his turn exposewith equal sincerity the failings, the wanderings of his heart, and, ifhe dare, aver, I was better than that man.”

“Such is the pure movement of nature prior to all reflection. Such is the force of natural pity, which the most depraved mores still have difficulty destroying, since everyday one sees in our theaters someone affected and weeping at the ills of some unfortunate person, and who, were he in the tyrant's place, would intensify the torments of his enemy still more; [like the bloodthirsty Sulla, so sensitive to ills he had not caused, or like Alexander of Pherae, who did not dare attend the performance of any tragedy, for fear of being seen weeping with Andromache and Priam, and yet who listened impassively to the cries of so many citizens who were killed everyday on his orders. Nature, in giving men tears, bears witness that she gave the human race the softest hearts.] Mandeville has a clear awareness that, with all their mores, men would never have been anything but monsters, if nature had not given them pity to aid their reason; but he has not seen that from this quality alone flow all the social virtues that he wants to deny in men. In fact, what are generosity, mercy, and humanity, if not pity applied to the weak, to the guilty, or to the human species in general. Benevolence and even friendship are, properly understood, the products of a constant pity fixed on a particular object; for is desiring that someone not suffer anything but desiring that he be happy?”