"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."
"Old men grasp more at life than babies, and leave it with a much worse grace than young people. It is because all their labours having been for this life, they perceive at last their trouble lost."
3 likes
Source: The Social Contract or Principles of Political Right by Jean Jacques Rousseau, book III. chapter XV, Deputies or Representatives, 1913.
About the author
Same author
More quotes by Jean-Baptiste 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."
"The less reasonable a cult is, the more men seek to establish it by force."
"Men always love what is good or what they find good; it is in judging what is good that they go wrong."
"The right of conquest has no foundation other than the right of the strongest."
"The man who has lived the longest is not he who has spent the greatest number of years, but he who has had the greatest sensibility of life."