"The general will is always right and tends to the public advantage; but it does not follow that the deliberations of the people are always equally correct."

"I detest the great, their condition, their maxims, their vices, and I should detest them still more if I were one of them."

"Everything is in a state of flux on this earth. Nothing keeps a form for long, and our affections, which are attached to external things, pass and change as they do."

"Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet."

"It is precisely because the force of things always tends to destroy equality that the force of legislation must always tend to maintain it."