Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts and Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality Among Men Quotes

“Lacking valid reasons to justify himself and sufficient strength to defend himself, easily crushing an individual, but himself crushed by gangs of bandits, alone against everyone and, because of mutual jealousies, unable to join with his equals against an enemy united by a common hope of pillage, the rich man, hard pressed by necessity, eventually conceived the most cleverly designed project which has ever entered the human mind. That was to use to his advantage the very forces of those who were attacking him, to turn his enemies into his defenders, to inspire them with other maxims, and to give them other institutions which were as beneficial to him as natural right was against him. With this in mind, after showing his neighbours the horror of a situation which armed them all against the others, which made their possessions as onerous as their needs, and in which no one found his security either in poverty or in wealth, he easily came up with specious reasons to lead them to his goal. "Let us unite," he said to them, "to protect the weak from oppression, to restrain the ambitious, and to assure to each man the possession of what belongs to him. Let us set up rules of justice and peace to which everyone is obliged to conform, which do not exempt any one, and which in some way make up for the whims of fortune, by subjecting the powerful and the weak equally to mutual obligations. In a word, instead of turning our forces against ourselves, let us collect them into one supreme power which governs us according to wise laws and which protects and defends all the members of the association, repels common enemies, and keeps us in an eternal harmony." He required much less than the equivalent of this speech to convince crude and easily seduced men, who, in addition, had too many things to disentangle among themselves to be able to go without arbitrators and too much avarice and ambition to be able to do without masters for any length of time. They all rushed headlong into their chains, believing they were guaranteeing their liberty.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts and Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality Among Men

“The mind, as well as the body, has its needs: those of the body are the basis of society, those of the mind its ornaments”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts and Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality Among Men

“Could integrity be the daughter of ignorance? Could knowledge and virtue be incompatible? What consequences could we not draw from these opinions? But to reconcile these apparent contradictions, it is necessary only to examine closely the vanity and the emptiness of those proud titles which dazzle us and which we hand out so gratuitously to human learning.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts and Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality Among Men