what makes the race truly prosperous is not so much peace as liberty.
 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract (1762). copy citation

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Author Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Source The Social Contract
Topic peace liberty
Date 1762
Language English
Reference Of the Social Contract, or Principles of Political Law, Book III
Note Translated by George Douglas Howard Cole
Weblink https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Social_Contract/Book_III

Context

“It appeared, says Machiavelli, that in the midst of murder, proscription and civil war, our republic only throve: the virtue, morality and independence of the citizens did more to strengthen it than all their dissensions had done to enfeeble it. A little disturbance gives the soul elasticity; what makes the race truly prosperous is not so much peace as liberty. ↑ The slow formation and the progress of the Republic of Venice in its lagoons are a notable instance of this sequence; and it is most astonishing that, after more than twelve hundred years' existence, the Venetians seem to be still at the second stage, which they reached with the Serrar di Consiglio in 1198.” source