# Quote — Jean Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract

> The first societies governed themselves aristocratically. The heads of families took counsel together on public affairs. The young bowed without question to the authority of experience. Hence such names as priests, elders, senate, and gerontes. The savages of North America govern themselves in this way even now, and their government is admirable.

- Author: [Jean Jacques Rousseau](https://www.leafyquotes.com/jean-jacques-rousseau.md)
- Book: [The Social Contract](https://www.leafyquotes.com/jean-jacques-rousseau/the-social-contract.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Social_Contract#Quotes) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/jean-jacques-rousseau/the-social-contract/the-first-societies

## More from this book

> Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains. One thinks himself the master of others, and still remains a greater slave than they.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/jean-jacques-rousseau/the-social-contract/man-is-born.md)

> The body politic, like the human body, begins to die from its birth, and bears in itself the causes of its destruction.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/jean-jacques-rousseau/the-social-contract/the-body-politic.md)

> At Genoa, the word Liberty may be read over the front of the prisons and on the chains of the galley-slaves. This application of the device is good and just. It is indeed only malefactors of all estates who prevent the citizen from being free. In the country in which all such men were in the galleys, the most perfect liberty would be enjoyed.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/jean-jacques-rousseau/the-social-contract/at-genoa-the.md)