Rousseau

• Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains. One thinks himself the master of others, and still remains a greater slave than they.
• Man's first law is to watch over his own preservation; his first care he owes to himself; and as soon as he reaches the age of reason, he becomes the only judge of the best means to preserve himself; he becomes his own master.
• To renounce liberty is to renounce being a man, to surrender the rights of humanity and even its duties.
• The bounds of human possibility are not as confining as we think they are; they are made to seem to be tight by our weaknesses, our vices, our prejudices that confine them.
• Nature never deceives us; it is we who deceive ourselves.
• It is in man's heart that the life of nature's spectacle exists; to see it, one must feel it.