When one wants to change manners and customs, one should not do so by changing the laws.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEUEvery man who has power is impelled to abuse it.
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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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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In the birth of societies it is the chiefs of states who give it its special character; and afterward it is this special character that forms the chiefs of state.
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Men, who are rogues individually, are in the mass very honorable people.
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In constitutional states, liberty is compensation for heavy taxes; in dictatorships, the subsititue is light taxes.
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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.
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To succeed in the world we must look foolish but be wise.
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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.
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When a government lasts a long while, it deteriorates by insensible degrees. Republics end through luxury, monarchies through poverty.
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If you run after wit, you will succeed in catching folly.
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I suffer from the disease of writing books and being ashamed of them when they are finished.
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Men should be bewailed at their birth, and not at their death.
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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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Not to be loved is a misfortune, but it is an insult to be loved no longer.
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Luxury ruins republics; poverty, monarchies.
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It is unreasonable … to oblige a man not to attempt the defense of his own life.
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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 mood and temper of the public in regard to the treatment of crime and criminals is one of the most unfailing tests of the civilisation of any country.
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The less men think, the more they talk.
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Better it is to say that the government most comfortable to nature is that which best agrees with the humor and disposition of the people in whose favor it is established.
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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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One 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.
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The crime against nature will never make any great progress in society unless people are prompted to it by some particular custom.
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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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This punishment of death is the remedy, as it were, of a sick society.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU