Jean Jacques Rousseau Social Contract Quotes & Sayings

adulation." I stare at the — Margaret Peterson Haddix

The price of being close to the President is delivering bad news. You fail him if you don't tell him the truth. Others won't do it. — Donald Rumsfeld

In the strict sense of the term, a true democracy has never existed, and never will exist. It is against natural order that the great number should govern and that the few should be governed. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

If the goal is to lower emissions, that's disconnected to most people. If the goal is to save taxpayers' money, now the public has some interest. — Mark Begich

However, it was the great 18th century social philosophers John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau who brought the concept of a social contract between citizens and governments sharply into political thinking, paving the way for popular democracy and constitutional republicanism. — Simon Mainwaring

A people who never misused the powers of government would never misuse independence, and a people which always governed itself well would not need to be governed. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Good laws lead to the making of better ones; bad ones bring about worse. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

What man loses by the social contract is his natural liberty and an unlimited right to everything he tries to get and succeeds in getting; what he gains is civil liberty and the proprietorship of all he possesses. If we are to avoid mistake in weighing one against the other, we must clearly distinguish natural liberty, which is bounded only by the strength of the individual, from civil liberty, which is limited by the general will; and possession, which is merely the effect of force or the right of the first occupier, from property, which can be founded only on a positive title. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

For the State, in relation to its members, is master of all their goods by the social contract, which, within the State, is the basis of all rights; — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Grief is not a pleasure, but it makes me remember, and I am grateful. — Abigail Thomas

The girl reflected back from the window in front of me has poinsettias growing out of her belly and head. She's the shape of a breakfast-link sausage standing on broomstick legs, her arms made from twigs, her face blurred with an eraser. I know that this is me, but it's not me, not really. I don't know what I look like. I can't remember how to look. — Laurie Halse Anderson