thecitizen, forever active, sweats, bustles about, constantly frets to seek ever morelaborious tasks: he works to death, he even runs toward it in order to be in aposition to live, or he renounces life in order to acquire immortality. He courtsthe great he hates and the rich he despises; he spares nothing to obtain the honorof serving them; he boasts proudly of his baseness and of their protection and,proud of his slavery, he speaks with contempt of those who do not have thehonor of sharing it.

his precious freedom, which is maintained by large nations onlythrough exorbitant taxes, costs you almost nothing to preserve

For freedomis like those hearty and succulent foods or those full-bodied wines which are fitfor nourishing and fortifying robust temperaments which are accustomed tothem, but which overwhelm, ruin, and intoxicate those weak and delicatetemperaments which are not up to them.

I would have chosen a society of a sizelimited by the extent of human faculties—that is, by the possibility of being wellgoverned—and where, each person being up to his task, no one was compelledto entrust others with the functions with which he was charged; a state where, allindividuals knowing one another, neither the obscure maneuvers of vice nor themodesty of virtue could be hidden from the public’s notice and judgment, andwhere that sweet habit of seeing and knowing one another made love of thefatherland a love of the citizens rather than love of the soi

For regardless of what the constitution of agovernment may be, if there is a single man5 who is not subject to the law, all theothers are necessarily at his discretion (I