Here are five quotes from Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Discourse on the Origin of Inequality:

It is by the activity of our passions, that our reason improves: we covet knowledge merely because we covet enjoyment, and it is impossible to conceive why a man exempt from fears and desires should take the trouble to reason.

– Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin of Inequality

The first man, who, after enclosing a piece of ground, took it into his head to say, “This is mine,” and found people simple enough to believe him, was the true founder of civil society.

– Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin of Inequality

With the poet, it is gold and silver, but with the philosopher it is iron and corn, which have civilized men, and ruined mankind.

– Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin of Inequality

I dare almost affirm that a state of reflection is a state against nature, and that the man who meditates is a depraved animal.

– Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin of Inequality

There is scarce any inequality among men in a state of nature, all that which we now behold owes its force and its growth to the development of our faculties and the improvement of our understanding, and at last becomes permanent and lawful by the establishment of property and laws.

– Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin of Inequality