Rousseau Social Contract Quotes & Sayings

Repetition comforts me for a time, then closes in. — Mason Cooley

I think American audiences like gangster movies. It's part of the culture. — Vincent Cassel

In his Social Contract, Rousseau noted the obvious, that Law is a very good thing for men with property and a very bad thing for men without property. — Saul D. Alinsky

Socialism may be worthless as a scheme, but it is not meaningless as a symptom. Rousseau's theory of the origin of society, of the social contract, and of a cure for all the social evils by a return to a state of nature, had, as we all know now, no more relation to fact than the dreams of an illiterate drunkard; but they were not without value as a vague and symbolical expression of certain evils from which the France of his day was suffering. — William Hurrell Mallock

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

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

WISDOM ISN'T ABOUT NOT MAKING MISTAKES BUT ABOUT LEARNING TO ESCAPE AFTERWARD WITH OUR DIGNITY AND SANITY INTACT. — Richard Templar

I have received your new book against the human race, and thank you for it. Never was such a cleverness used in the design of making us all stupid. One longs, in reading your book, to walk on all fours. But as I have lost that habit for more than sixty years, I feel unhappily the impossibility of resuming it. Nor can I embark in search of the savages of Canada, because the maladies to which I am condemned render a European surgeon necessary to me; because war is going on in those regions; and because the example of our actions has made the savages nearly as bad as ourselves. [in response to Rousseau's "The Social Contract"] — Voltaire

Chant your mantra while engaged in work. This way, the mind will be continuously focused on Him. — Mata Amritanandamayi

You have come from God, you are a spark of His Glory; you are a wave of that Ocean of Bliss; you will get peace only when you again merge in Him. — Sathya Sai Baba

Oh build your ship of death, oh build it in time and build it lovingly, and put it between the hands of your soul. — D.H. Lawrence

The real social contract, (Edmund Burke) argued, was not Rousseau's social contract between the noble savage and the General Will, but a "partnership" between the present generation and future generations. — Niall Ferguson

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

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

It should be remembered that the foundation of the social contract is property; and its first condition, that every one should be maintained in the peaceful possession of what belongs to him. — Jean-Baptiste Rousseau

Golden Rule has been rediscovered many times: by the authors of Leviticus and the Mahabharata; by Hillel, Jesus, and Confucius; by the Stoic philosophers of the Roman Empire; by social contract theorists such as Hobbes, Rousseau, and Locke; and by moral philosophers such as Kant in his categorical imperative. — Steven Pinker

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

I haven't been locked into just the sci-fi although I love it - mostly for the fans ... It's tremendous to go out and do all these conventions and thank them for supporting the show. But it's been a mix ... I mean I (also) love the warm and fuzzies (like Cedar Cove and My Best Friends' Dogs). — Teryl Rothery

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