Jean-Jacques Rousseau on Freedom: Discover the True Meaning of Freedom

"The true purpose of man, not that which is dictated by changing inclinations, but that which is dictated by eternal and unchanging reason, is the highest and most proportionate development of his powers into a whole. Freedom is the first and indispensable condition for this development. (...) It is precisely the diversity that arises from the union of many that is the highest good that society offers, and this diversity is certainly always lost to the extent that the state interferes. It is no longer actually the members of a nation who live together in community, but individual subjects who enter into a relationship with the state, i.e., with the spirit that prevails in its government, and indeed into a relationship in which the superior power of the state already inhibits the free play of forces. Uniform causes have uniform effects. The more the state intervenes, the more similar not only everything that acts becomes, but also everything that is acted upon. (...) But anyone who reasons in this way for others is, not without reason, suspected of misunderstanding humanity and wanting to turn people into machines." Alexander von Humboldt

"Until you could make out practically that great work, a combination of opposing forces, "a work of labour long, and endless praise," the utmost caution ought to have been used in the reduction of the royal power, which alone was capable of holding together the comparatively heterogeneous mass of your states. But at this day, all these considerations are unreasonable. To what end should we discuss the limitations of royal power? Your king is in prison. Why speculate on the measure and standard of liberty? I doubt much, very much indeed, whether France is at all ripe for liberty on any standard. Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites, — in proportion as their love to justice is above their rapacity, — in proportion as their soundness and sobriety of understanding is above their vanity and presumption, — in proportion as they are more disposed to listen to the counsels of the wise and good, in preference to the flattery of knaves. Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters." Edmund Burke