Liberado de todas las pasiones terrenas que engendra el tumulto de la vida social, mi alma se elevaría frecuentemente por encima de esta atmósfera, y… - Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Ancient politicians talked incessantly about morality and virtue; our politicians talk only about business and money. One will tell you that in a particular country a man is worth the sum he could be sold for in Algiers; another, by following this calculation, will find countries where a man is worth nothing, and others where he is worth less than nothing. They assess men like herds of livestock. According to them, a man has no value to the State apart from what he consumes in it. Thus one Sybarite would have been worth at least thirty Lacedaemonians. Would someone therefore hazard a guess which of these two republics, Sparta or Sybaris, was overthrown by a handful of peasants and which one made Asia tremble?

The sophism that ruined me is the one made by the majority of men,
who complain about lacking strength when it is already too late to make use of it.
[...]
Virtue costs us only through our own fault, and if we always wanted to be wise, we would rarely need to be virtuous. But inclinations that would be
easy to overcome sweep us away without resistance:
we give way to slight temptations whose danger we scorn

It is a great evil for a Chief of a nation to be born the enemy of the freedom whose defender he should be.