[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.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEULuxury ruins republics; poverty, monarchies.
More Baron de Montesquieu Quotes
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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.
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Thus the creation, which seems an arbitrary act, supposes laws as invariable as those of the fatality of the Atheists. It would be absurd to say that the Creator might govern the world without those rules, since without them it could not subsist.
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I acknowledge that history is full of religious wars: but we must distinguish; it is not the multiplicity of religions which has produced these wars; it was the intolerating spirit which animated that one which thought she had the power of governing.
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Very good laws may be ill timed.
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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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The deterioration of every government begins with the decay of the principles on which it was founded.
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In the matter of dress one should always keep below one’s ability.
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In constitutional states, liberty is compensation for heavy taxes; in dictatorships, the subsititue is light taxes.
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The public business must be carried on with a certain motion, neither too quick nor too slow.
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Law should be like death, which spares no one.
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As men are affected in all ages by the same passions, the occasions which bring about great changes are different, but the causes are always the same.
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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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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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This punishment of death is the remedy, as it were, of a sick society.
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The life of man is but a succession of vain hopes and groundless fears.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU