Jean-Jacques Rousseau Quotes

I have one abiding religion-human liberty.

Slavery and freedom cannot exist together.

Though the Negroes are fed, clothed, and housed, and though the Irish peasant is starved, naked, and roofless, the bare name of freemen—the lordship over his own person, the power to choose and will—are blessings beyond food, raiment, or shelter; possessing which, the want of every comfort of life is yet more tolerable than their fullest enjoyment without them.

And there is no difference, in principle - but only in degree - between political and chattel slavery. The former, no less than the latter, denies a man's ownership of himself and the products of his labor; and asserts that other men may own him, and dispose of him and his property, for their uses, and at their pleasure.

By a divine paradox, wherever there is one slave there are two

So plain that no one, high or low, ever does mistake it, except in a plainly selfish way; for although volume upon volume is written to prove slavery a very good thing, we never hear of the man who wishes to take the good of it, by being a slave himself.

Emancipation - what is meant by it? Simply that the slaves shall cease to be held as property and shall henceforth be held and treated as human beings. Simply, that we should take our feet from off their necks.

A man is born free.

I'm a human being I'm not a piece of property. I am not a consignment of goods.

I have a natural right to do whatever I want with my body... as long as it doesn't affect anybody else or any other property.

The love of liberty and the sense of human dignity are the basic elements of the Anarchist creed.

All men are born free.

We must free the slaves or be ourselves subdued.

Man above all institutions!

Liberty is the greatest blessing that men enjoy, and slavery is the heaviest curse that human nature is capable of …. those who are governed at the will of another, and whose property may be taken from them...without their consent...are in the miserable condition of slaves.

A slave cannot be freed, save he do it himself. Nor can you enslave a free man; the very most you can do is kill him!

Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains. Those who think themselves the masters of others are indeed greater slaves than they.

This is a world of compensations; and he who would be no slave, must consent to have no slave.

If you would have the slave show the virtues of the freeman, you must first make him free.

Men aspiring to be free can hardly think of enslaving others.

Not only was I not born to be a slave; I was not born to hope to become the equal of the slave master.

I have observed this in my experience of slavery, - that whenever my condition was improved, instead of its increasing my contentment, it only increased my desire to be free, and set me to thinking of plans to gain my freedom. I have found that, to make a contented slave, it is necessary to make a thoughtless one. It is necessary to darken his moral and mental vision, and, as far as possible, to annihilate the power of reason. He must be able to detect no inconsistencies in slavery; he must be made to feel that slavery is right; and he can be brought to that only when he ceased to be a man.

Never may an act of possession be exercised upon a free being; the exclusive possession of a woman is no less unjust than the possession of slaves; all men are born free, all have equal rights: never should we lose sight of those principles; according to which never may there be granted to one sex the legitimate right to lay monopolizing hands upon the other, and never may one of the sexes, or classes, arbitrarily possess the other.

To renounce liberty is to renounce being a man, to surrender the rights of humanity and even its duties.

Disguise thyself as thou wilt, still, Slavery," said I, "still thou art a bitter draught.