Wherever I find envy I take a pleasure in provoking it: I always praise before an envious man those who make him grow pale.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEULove of reading enables a man to exchange the weary hours, which come to every one, for hours of delight.
More Baron de Montesquieu Quotes
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The state is the association of men, and not men themselves; the citizen may perish, and the man remain.
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Power should be a check on power.
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The less luxury there is in a republic, the more it is perfect.
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The tyranny of a prince in an oligarchy is not so dangerous to the public welfare as the apathy of a citizen in a democracy.
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I have never known any distress that an hour’s reading did not relieve.
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Injustice towards others is a threat to everybody
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Republics are brought to their ends by luxury; monarchies by poverty.
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This punishment of death is the remedy, as it were, of a sick society.
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We ought to be very cautious and circumspect in the prosecution of magic and heresy. The attempt to put down these two crimes may be extremely perilous to liberty.
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It is difficult for the united states to be all of equal power and extent.
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It is unreasonable … to oblige a man not to attempt the defense of his own life.
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If you would be holy, instruct your children, because all the good acts they perform will be imputed to you.
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Study has been for me the sovereign remedy against all the disappointments of life. I have never known any trouble that an hour’s reading would not dissipate.
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I shall ever repeat it, that mankind are governed not by extremes, but by principals of moderation.
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Ever since the invention of gunpowder.. I continually tremble lest men should, in the end, uncover some secret which would provide a short way of abolishing mankind, of annihilating peoples and nations in their entirety.
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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.
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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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Fain would I glide down a gentle river, but I am carried away by a torrent.
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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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Man, as a physical being, is like other bodies governed by invariable laws.
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The state of slavery is in its own nature bad.
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But constant experience shows us that every man invested with power is apt to abuse it, and to carry his authority as far as it will go.
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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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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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The spirit of moderation should also be the spirit of the lawgiver.
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Republics end through luxury; monarchies through poverty.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU