And yet we have what purports, or professes, or is claimed, to be a contract—the Constitution—made eighty years ago, by men who are now all dead, and who never had any power to bind us,...

The only idea they have ever manifested as to what is a government of consent, is this–that it is one to which everybody must consent, or be shot.

In regard to the so-called social contract, I have often had occasion to protest that I haven’t even seen the contract, much less been asked to consent to it. A valid contract requires voluntary offer,...

Our social contract is becoming an exchange of free thought for mindless stimuli.

Here beyond men’s judgments all covenants were brittle.

The seventeenth century is everywhere a time in which the state’s power over everything individual increases, whether that power be in absolutist hands or may be considered the result of a contract, etc. People begin...

Oamenii sunt răi; o tristă şi necontenită experienţă mă scuteşte de a o mai dovedi. Totuşi, omul este bun de la natură şi cred că am demonstrat acest lucru. Ce oare l-a putut deci deprava...