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.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEUThe wickedness of mankind makes it necessary for the law to suppose them better than they really are.
More Baron de Montesquieu Quotes
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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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An injustice committed against anyone is a threat to everyone.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
Laws, in their most general signification, are the necessary relations derived from the nature of things.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
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.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
We must have constantly present in our minds the difference between independence and liberty. Liberty is a right of doing whatever the laws permit, and if a citizen could do what they forbid he would no longer be possessed of liberty.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
Liberty is the right of doing whatever the laws permit.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
When God endowed human beings with brains, He did not intend to guarantee them.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
Although born in a prosperous realm, we did not believe that its boundaries should limit our knowledge, and that the lore of the East should alone enlighten us.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
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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Lunch kills half of Paris, supper the other half.
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It is not the young people that degenerate; they are not spoiled till those of mature age are already sunk into corruption.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
An empire founded by war has to maintain itself by war.
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Europe is a state with several provinces
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Better it is to say that the government most comfortable to nature is that which best agrees with the humor and disposition of the people in whose favor it is established.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
In the birth of societies it is the chiefs of states who give it its special character; and afterward it is this special character that forms the chiefs of state.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU