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"speech therefore appears to have been exceedingly requisite to establish the use of speech."
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Discourse on Inequality"With this view, after laying before his neighbours all the horrors of a situation, which armed them all one against another, which rendered their possessions as burdensome as their wants were intolerable, and in which no one could expect any safety either in poverty or riches, he easily invented specious arguments to bring them over to his purpose. "Let us unite," said he."
Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men, also commonly known as The Second Discourse, is a 1755 treatise by philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, on the topic of social inequality and its origins. The work was written in 1754 as Rousseau's entry in a competition by the Academy of Dijon, and was published in 1755.
"speech therefore appears to have been exceedingly requisite to establish the use of speech."
"the equality once broken was followed by the most shocking disorders."
"I know that [civilized men] do nothing but boast incessantly of the peace and repose they enjoy in their chains.... But when I see [barbarous man] sacrifice pleasures, repose, wealth, power, and life itself for the preservation of this sole good which is so disdained by those who have lost it; when I see animals born free and despising captivity break their heads against the bars of their prison; when I see multitudes of entirely naked savages scorn European voluptuousness and endure hunger, fire, the sword, and death to preserve only their independence, I feel it does not behoove slaves to reason about freedom."
"It appears, in fact, that if I am bound to do no injury to my fellow-creatures, this is less because they are rational than because they are sentient beings: and this quality, being common both to men and beasts, ought to entitle the latter at least to the privilege of not being wantonly ill-treated by the former."
"Money is the seed of money, and the first guinea is sometimes more difficult to acquire than the second million."
"Never exceed your rights, and they will soon become unlimited."