The crime against nature will never make any great progress in society unless people are prompted to it by some particular custom.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEUIn a republic there is no coercive force as in other governments, the laws must therefore endeavor to supply this defect.
More Baron de Montesquieu Quotes
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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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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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The Ottoman Empire whose sick body was not supported by a mild and regular diet, but by a powerful treatment, which continually exhausted it.
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A man who writes well writes not as others write, but as he himself writes; it is often in speaking badly that he speaks well.
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The culminating point of administration is to know well how much power, great or small, we ought to use in all circumstances.
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A really intelligent man feels what other men only know.
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Political liberty in a citizen is that tranquillity of spirit which comes from the opinion each one has of his security, and in order for him to have this liberty the government must be such that one citizen cannot fear another citizen.
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Honor sets all the parts of the body politic in motion, and by its very action connects them; thus each individual advances the public good, while he only thinks of promoting his own interest.
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The love of study is in us the only lasting passion. All the others quit us in proportion as this miserable machine which holds them approaches its ruins.
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The spirit of commerce… renders every man willing to live on his own property…& prevents the growth of luxury.
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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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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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There should be weeping at a man’s birth, not at his death.
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In bodies moved, the motion is received, increased, diminished, or lost, according to the relations of the quantity of matter and velocity; each diversity is uniformity, each change is constancy.
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It is unreasonable … to oblige a man not to attempt the defense of his own life.
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People here argue about religion interminably, but it appears that they are competing at the same time to see who can be the least devout.
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Political liberty is to be found only in moderate governments.
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When we seek after wit, we discover only foolishness.
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Liberty is the right of doing whatever the laws permit.
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Countries are well cultivated, not as they are fertile, but as they are free.
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The sublimity of administration consists in knowing the proper degree of power that should be exerted on different occasions.
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The severity of the laws prevents their execution.
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Very good laws may be ill timed.
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Democracy is corrupted not only when the spirit of equality is corrupted, but likewise when they fall into a spirit of extreme equality.
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There are countries where a man is worth nothing; there are others where he is worth less than nothing.
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The state is the association of men, and not men themselves; the citizen may perish, and the man remain.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU