"My design in this treatise is to enquire whether, taking men such as they are, and such laws as they may be made, it is not possible to establish some just and certain rule for the administration of the civil order." Introduction to Book 1, p. 5

"Man is born free, and yet we see him everywhere in chains. Those who believe themselves the masters of others cease not to be even greater slaves than the people they govern." Book 1, Chapter 1, p. 5.

"[Man's] first law is that of self-preservation, his first cares those which he owes to himself; and as soon as he has attained the age of reason, being the only judge of the means proper to preserve himself, he becomes at once his own master." Book 1, Chapter 2, p. 6.

"The strongest are still never sufficiently strong to ensure them continual mastership, unless they find means of transforming force into...