Success in the majority of circumstances depends on knowing how long it takes to succeed.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEUDemocracy 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.
More Baron de Montesquieu Quotes
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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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Liberty itself has appeared intolerable to those nations who have not been accustomed to enjoy it.
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When the savages of Louisiana wish to have fruit, they cut the tree at the bottom and gather the fruit. That is exactly a despotic government.
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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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Knowledge humanizes mankind, and reason inclines to mildness; but prejudices eradicate every tender disposition.
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What unhappy beings men are! They constantly waver between false hopes and silly fears, and instead of relying on reason they create monsters to frighten themselves with, and phantoms which lead them astray.
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In constitutional states, liberty is compensation for heavy taxes; in dictatorships, the subsititue is light taxes.
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If I knew something that would serve my country but would harm mankind, I would never reveal it; for I am a citizen of humanity first and by necessity, and a citizen of France second, and only by accident
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Very good laws may be ill timed.
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The crime against nature will never make any great progress in society unless people are prompted to it by some particular custom.
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I have always observed that to succeed in the world one should seem a fool, but be wise.
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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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The history of commerce is that of the communication of the people.
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Human laws made to direct the will ought to give precepts, and not counsels.
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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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The success of most things depends upon knowing how long it will take to succeed.
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To succeed in the world we must look foolish but be wise.
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It is difficult for the united states to be all of equal power and extent.
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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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Do you think that God will punish them for not practicing a religion which he did not reveal to them?
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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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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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In every government there are three sorts of power: the legislative; the executive in respect to things dependent on the law of nations; and the executive in regard to matters that depend on the civil law.
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Liberty is the right to do what the law permits.
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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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Republics end through luxury; monarchies through poverty.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU