Man was born free, and everywhere he is in chains.

[Zeno]

The fundamental principle of all morals, on the basis of which I have reasoned in all my writings, and which I have developed in this last one [Emile] with as much clarity as I was able, is that man is naturally good, loving justice and order; that there is absolutely no original perversity in the human heart, and that the first movements of nature are always right.

-Rousseau [in a letter to Christophe de Beaumont]