Vanity and pride of nations; vanity is as advantageous to a government as pride is dangerous.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEUWe receive three educations, one from our parents, one from our school-masters, and one from the world. The third contradicts all that the first two teach us.
More Baron de Montesquieu Quotes
-
-
Peace is a natural effect of trade.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
The wickedness of mankind makes it necessary for the law to suppose them better than they really are.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
An author is a fool who, not content with boring those he lives with, insists on boring future generations.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
Each particular society begins to feel its strength, whence arises a state of war between different nations.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
At our coming into the world we contract an immense debt to our country, which we can never discharge.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
The state of slavery is in its own nature bad.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
Oh, how empty is praise when it reflects back to its origin!
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
When we seek after wit, we discover only foolishness.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
To succeed in the world we must look foolish but be wise.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
When a government is arrived to that degree of corruption as to be incapable of reforming itself, it would not lose much by being new moulded.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
Great commanders write their actions with simplicity; because they receive more glory from facts than from words.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
There have never been so many civil wars as in the Kingdom of Christ.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
There is as yet no liberty if the power of judging be not separated from legislative power and the executrix
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
Political liberty in a citizen is that tranquillity of spirit which comes from the opinion each one has of his security, and in order for him to have this liberty the government must be such that one citizen cannot fear another citizen.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
Mediocrity is a hand-rail.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
It is rare to find learned men who are clean, do not stink and have a sense of humour.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
Democracy is corrupted not only when the spirit of equality is corrupted, but likewise when they fall into a spirit of extreme equality.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
Virtue is necessary to a republic.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
Liberty is the right of doing whatever the laws permit.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
Countries are well cultivated, not as they are fertile, but as they are free.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
You have to study a great deal to know a little.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
The prejudices of superstition are superior to all others, and have the strongest influence on the human mind.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
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.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
Europe is a state with several provinces
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
Man is a social animal formed to please in society.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
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.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU