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I hate books they teach us only to talk about what we do not know.

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We are born weak, we need strength; helpless, we need aid; foolish, we need reason. All that we lack at birth, all that we need when we come to man's ...more

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No man has any natural authority over his fellow men.

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Although modesty is natural to man, it is not natural to children. Modesty only begins with the knowledge of evil.

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Or, rather, let us be more simple and less vain.

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...an animal, at the end of a few months, is what it will be all its life; and its species, at the end of a thousand years, is what it was in the firs...more

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Such is the pure movement of nature prior to all reflection. Such is the force of natural pity, which the most depraved mores still have difficulty de...more

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The extreme inequality of our ways of life, the excess of idleness among some and the excess of toil among others, the ease of stimulating and gratify...more

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I ask: which of the two, civil or natural life, is more likely to become insufferable to those who live it? We see about us practically no people who ...more