When God endowed human beings with brains, He did not intend to guarantee them.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEUMediocrity is a hand-rail.
More Baron de Montesquieu Quotes
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It is clear that in a monarchy, where he who commands the exceution of the laws generally thinks himself above them, there is lessneed of virtue than in a popular government, where the person entrusted with the execution of the laws is sensible of his being subject to their direction.
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In the infancy of societies, the chiefs of state shape its institutions; later the institutions shape the chiefs of state.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
There are only two cases in which war is just: first, in order to resist the aggression of an enemy, and second, in order to help an ally who has been attacked.
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An injustice to one is a threat made to all
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If I knew of something that could serve my nation but would ruin another, I would not propose it to my prince, for I am first a man and only then a Frenchman… because I am necessarily a man, and only accidentally am I French.
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Liberty… is there only when there is no abuse of power.
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The wickedness of mankind makes it necessary for the law to suppose them better than they really are.
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Laws, in their most general signification, are the necessary relations arising from the nature of things. In this sense all beings have their laws: the Deity His laws, the material world its laws, the intelligences superior to man their laws, the beasts their laws, man his laws.
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In a republic there is no coercive force as in other governments, the laws must therefore endeavor to supply this defect.
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A really intelligent man feels what other men only know.
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We ought to be very cautious and circumspect in the prosecution of magic and heresy. The attempt to put down these two crimes may be extremely perilous to liberty.
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We receive three educations, one from our parents, one from our school-masters, and one from the world. The third contradicts all that the first two teach us.
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For a country, everything will be lost when the jobs of an economist and a banker become highly respected professions.
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Religious wars are not caused by the fact that there is more than one religion, but by the spirit of intolerance… the spread of which can only be regarded as the total eclipse of human reason.
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Luxury ruins republics; poverty, monarchies.
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A fondness for reading changes the inevitable dull hours of our life into exquisite hours of delight.
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To become truly great, one has to stand with people, not above them.
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Republics end through luxury; monarchies through poverty.
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Democracy has two excesses to avoid: the spirit of inequality, which leads to an aristocracy, or to the government of a single individual; and the spirit of extreme equality, which conducts it to despotism, as the despotism of a single individual finishes by conquest.
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If the triangles made a god, they would give him three sides.
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In republican governments, men are all equal; equal they are also in despotic governments: in the former, because they are everything; in the latter, because they are nothing.
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What orators lack in depth they make up for in length.
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To love to read is to exchange hours of ennui for hours of delight.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person, or in the same body of magistrates, there can be no liberty; because apprehensions may arise, lest the same monarch or senate should enact tyrannical laws, to execute them in a tyrannical manner.
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I never listen to calumnies, because if they are untrue I run the risk of being deceived, and if they be true, of hating persons not worth thinking about.
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Virtue is necessary to a republic.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU