There is still another inconvenieney in conquests made by democracies; their government is ever odious to the conquered states. It is apparently monarchical, but in reality it is more oppressive than monarchy, as the experience of all ages and countries evinces.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEUIf you would be holy, instruct your children, because all the good acts they perform will be imputed to you.
More Baron de Montesquieu Quotes
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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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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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Certain kinds of foolishness are such that a greater foolishness would be better.
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Raillery is a mode of speaking in favor of one’s wit at the expense of one’s better nature.
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It is difficult for the united states to be all of equal power and extent.
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Laws undertake to punish only overt acts.
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There are three species of government: republican, monarchical, and despotic.
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The love of study is in us the only lasting passion. All the others quit us in proportion as this miserable machine which holds them approaches its ruins.
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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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Democracy has two excesses to avoid: the spirit of inequality, which leads to an aristocracy, or to the government of a single individual; and the spirit of extreme equality, which conducts it to despotism, as the despotism of a single individual finishes by conquest.
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At our coming into the world we contract an immense debt to our country, which we can never discharge.
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The history of commerce is that of the communication of the people.
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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.
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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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Laws, in their most general signification, are the necessary relations arising from the nature of things. In this sense all beings have their laws: the Deity His laws, the material world its laws, the intelligences superior to man their laws, the beasts their laws, man his laws.
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The state of slavery is in its own nature bad.
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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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To lend money without interest, is certainly an action laudable and extremely good; but it is obvious, that it is only a counsel of religion, and not a civil law.
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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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Man is a social animal formed to please in society.
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In the infancy of societies, the chiefs of state shape its institutions; later the institutions shape the chiefs of state.
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Republics are brought to their ends by luxury; monarchies by poverty.
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The English are busy folk; they have no time in which to be polite.
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The English are busy; they don’t have time to be polite.
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When the [law making] and [law enforcement] powers are united in the same person… there can be no liberty.
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The reason the Romans built their great paved highways was because they had such inconvenient footwear.
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