For in appearing to use only its rights, the Prince can very easily expand them and, on the pretext of public calm, prevent assemblies intended to re… - Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Our passions are the chief means of self-preservation; to try to destroy them is therefore as absurd as it is useless; this would be to overcome nature, to reshape God's handiwork. Extend self-love to others and it is transformed into virtue, a virtue which has its root in the heart of every one of us.

çocuğun yüreğinde ise etkinlik adamakıllı boldur ve dışarıya yayılır; çocuk kendisini çevreleyen her şeyi canlandırmak için sanki yeterince yaşam dolu olduğunu hisseder. Yapsın ya da bozsun, önemi yoktur; şeylerin durumunu değiştirmesi yeterlidir ve her değişiklik bir etkinliktir. Yıkmaya, yok etmeye karşı daha çok eğilimi varmış gibi görünse de, bu hiç de kötülük yüzünden değildir, çünkü oluşturan eylem her zaman yavaştır, yıkan, yok eden eylem daha çabuk olduğu için canlılığına daha uygundur.

First, because, in the first case, the right of conquest being in fact no right at all, it could not serve as a foundation for any other right, the conqueror and the conquered ever remaining with respect to each other in a state of war, unless the conquered, restored to the full possession of their liberty, should freely choose their conqueror for their chief. Till then, whatever capitulations might have been made between them, as these capitulations were founded upon violence, and of course de facto null and void, there could not have existed in this hypothesis either a true society, or a political body, or any other law but that of the strongest. Second, because these words strong and weak, are ambiguous in the second case; for during the interval between the establishment of the right of property or prior occupation and that of political government, the meaning of these terms is better expressed by the words poor and rich, as before the establishment of laws men in reality had no other means of reducing their equals, but by invading the property of these equals, or by parting with some of their own property to them. Third, because the poor having nothing but their liberty to lose, it would have been the height of madness in them to give up willingly the only blessing they had left without obtaining some consideration for it: whereas the rich being sensible, if I may say so, in every part of their possessions, it was much easier to do them mischief, and therefore more incumbent upon them to guard against it; and because, in fine, it is but reasonable to suppose, that a thing has been invented by him to whom it could be of service rather than by him to whom it must prove detrimental.