Political liberty is to be found only in moderate governments.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEUOne more organ or one less in our body would give us a different intelligence. In fact, all the established laws as to why our body is a certain way would be different if our body were not that way.
More Baron de Montesquieu Quotes
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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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…when the laws have ceased to be executed, as this can only come from the corruption of the republic, the state is already lost.
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Men should be bewailed at their birth, and not at their death.
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What orators lack in depth they make up for in length.
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In the matter of dress one should always keep below one’s ability.
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Talent is a gift which God has given us secretly, and which we reveal without perceiving it.
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You have to study a great deal to know a little.
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There is no nation so powerful, as the one that obeys its laws not from principals of fear or reason, but from passion.
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Men, who are rogues individually, are in the mass very honorable people.
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Oh, how empty is praise when it reflects back to its origin!
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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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Love of reading enables a man to exchange the weary hours, which come to every one, for hours of delight.
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The law of nations is naturally founded on this principle, that different nations ought in time of peace to do one another all the good they can, and in time of war as little injury as possible, without prejudicing their real interests.
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When the body of the people is possessed of the supreme power, it is called a democracy.
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Countries are not cultivated in proportion to their fertility, but to their liberty.
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They who assert that a blind fatality produced the various effects we behold in this world talk very absurdly; for can anything be more unreasonable than to pretend that a blind fatality could be productive of intelligent beings.
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Luxury ruins republics; poverty, monarchies.
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The less men think, the more they talk.
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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 success of most things depends upon knowing how long it will take to succeed.
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Man, as a physical being, is like other bodies governed by invariable laws.
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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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There is a very good saying that if triangles invented a god, they would make him three-sided.
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There is no crueler tyranny than that which is perpetuated under the shield of law and in the name of justice.
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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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The pagan religion, which prohibited only some of the grosser crimes, and which stopped the hand but meddled not with the heart, might have crimes that were inexplicable.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU