Civilised man is born and dies a slave. The infant is bound up in swaddling clothes, the corpse is nailed down in his coffin. All his life long man is imprisoned by our institutions.
 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile, or On Education (1762). copy citation

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Author Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Source Emile, or On Education
Topic freedom institutions imprisonment
Date 1762
Language English
Reference
Note Translated by Barbara Foxley
Weblink http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/5427/pg5427-images.html

Context

“A man maybe buried at a hundred and may never have lived at all. He would have fared better had he died young.
Our wisdom is slavish prejudice, our customs consist in control, constraint, compulsion. Civilised man is born and dies a slave. The infant is bound up in swaddling clothes, the corpse is nailed down in his coffin. All his life long man is imprisoned by our institutions.
I am told that many midwives profess to improve the shape of the infant's head by rubbing, and they are allowed to do it. Our heads are not good enough as God made them, they must be moulded outside by the nurse and inside by the philosopher.” source
Original quote

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