With truths of a certain kind, it is not enough to make them appear convincing: one must also make them felt. Of such kind are moral truths.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEUVirtue in a republic is the love of one’s country, that is the love of equality.
More Baron de Montesquieu Quotes
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It is rare to find learned men who are clean, do not stink and have a sense of humour.
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Friendship is an arrangement by which we undertake to exchange small favors for big ones.
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Men in excess of happiness or misery are equally inclined to severity. Witness conquerors and monks! It is mediocrity alone, and a mixture of prosperous and adverse fortune that inspire us with lenity and pity.
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The pagan religion, which prohibited only some of the grosser crimes, and which stopped the hand but meddled not with the heart, might have crimes that were inexplicable.
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Love of the republic in a democracy, is a love of the democracy; love of the democracy is that of equality. Love of the democracy is likewise that of frugality.
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Honor is unknown in despotic states.
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Virtue has needs of limits.
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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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Law in general is human reason, inasmuch as it governs all the inhabitants of the earth: the political and civil laws of each nation ought to be only the particular cases in which human reason is applied.
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The Christian religion is a stranger to mere despotic power. The mildness so frequently recommended in the Gospel is incompatible with the despotic rage.
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The power of divorce can be given only to those who feel the inconveniences of marriage, and who are sensible of the moment when it is for their interest to make them cease.
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[The Pope] will make the king believe that three are only one, that the bread he eats is not bread… and a thousand other things of the same kind.
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This punishment of death is the remedy, as it were, of a sick society.
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I suffer from the disease of writing books and being ashamed of them when they are finished.
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The coffee is prepared in such a way that it makes those who drink it witty: at least there is not a single soul who, on quitting the house, does not believe himself four times wittier that when he entered it.
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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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As virtue is necessary in a republic, and honor in a monarchy, fear is what is required in a despotism. As for virtue, it is not at all necessary, and honor would be dangerous there.
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If triangles had a god, he would have three sides.
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In constitutional states, liberty is compensation for heavy taxes; in dictatorships, the subsititue is light taxes.
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I shall be obliged to wander to the right and to the left, that I may investigate and discover the truth.
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Sometimes a man who deserves to be looked upon because he is a fool is despised only because he is a lawyer.
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Experience constantly proves that every man who has power is impelled to abuse it; he goes on till he is pulled up by some limits. Who would say it! virtue even has need of limits.
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Slowness is frequently the cause of much greater slowness.
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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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The laws do not take upon them to punish any other than overt acts.
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As soon as man enters into a state of society he loses the sense of his weakness; equality ceases, and then commences the state of war.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU