Young teacher, I am setting before you a difficult task, the art of controlling without precepts, and doing everything without doing anything at all.… - Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Madenlerde ne güzellik ne çekicilik vardır. Toprağın bağlarına gizlemiş bu servetler sanki insanların açgözlülüklerini eyleme geçirmemek için gözlerinden kaçırılmıştır, insanların orada, daha kolay erişilir ve daha gerçek olup, kötülüğe kapıldıkçazevk almamaya başladığı servetleri tamamlamak üzere, yedek diye duruyorlar. İnsan işte o zaman, derdine umar bulmak için sanayiyi, bu zorluklarla dolu işi yardıma çağırırlar; toprağın kendiliğinden verdiği gerçek nimetlerin yerine, var sanılan nimetleri arar. Görmeye artık layık olmadıkları güneşten ve günden kaçarlar, kendilerini diri diri gömerkler; haklıdırlar, çünkü, gün aydınlığında yaşamaya layık değildirler artık.

If I had remained free, obscure, and alone placed in the situation Nature designed me for, I should have done nothing but what was right, for my heart bears not the feeds of any mischievous passion. Had I been invisible and powerful as the Almighty, I should have been benevolent and good like him: it is power and freedom that make good men, weakness and slavery never made any but wicked ones.

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?