The public business must be carried on with a certain motion, neither too quick nor too slow.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEUWhen the [law making] and [law enforcement] powers are united in the same person… there can be no liberty.
More Baron de Montesquieu Quotes
-
-
Luxury ruins republics; poverty, monarchies.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
The deterioration of every government begins with the decay of the principles on which it was founded.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
We 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.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
Law in general is human reason, inasmuch as it governs all the inhabitants of the earth: the political and civil laws of each nation ought to be only the particular cases in which human reason is applied.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
The wickedness of mankind makes it necessary for the law to suppose them better than they really are.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
…when the laws have ceased to be executed, as this can only come from the corruption of the republic, the state is already lost.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
Laws, in their most general signification, are the necessary relations derived from the nature of things.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
Mediocrity is a hand-rail.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
You have to study a great deal to know a little.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
To become truly great, one has to stand with people, not above them.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
[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 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 -
I have read descriptions of Paradise that would make any sensible person stop wanting to go there.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
Politics are a smooth file, which cuts gradually, and attains its end by slow progression.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
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.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
In republican governments, men are all equal; equal they are also in despotic governments: in the former, because they are everything; in the latter, because they are nothing.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
The state is the association of men, and not men themselves; the citizen may perish, and the man remain.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
The crime against nature will never make any great progress in society unless people are prompted to it by some particular custom.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
There is no one, says another, whom fortune does not visit once in his life; but when she does not find him ready to receive her, she walks in at the door, and flies out at the window.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
If you run after wit, you will succeed in catching folly.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
False happiness renders men stern and proud, and that happiness is never communicated. True happiness renders them kind and sensible, and that happiness is always shared.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
A nation may lose its liberties in a day and not miss them in a century.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
The false notion of miracles comes of our vanity, which makes us believe we are important enough for the Supreme Being to upset nature on our behalf.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
There are bad examples which are worse than crimes; and more states have perished from the violation of morality than from the violation of law.
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 -
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.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU