Power should be a check on power.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEUExperience constantly proves that every man who has power is impelled to abuse it; he goes on till he is pulled up by some limits. Who would say it! virtue even has need of limits.
More Baron de Montesquieu Quotes
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It is difficult for the united states to be all of equal power and extent.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
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.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
We must have constantly present in our minds the difference between independence and liberty. Liberty is a right of doing whatever the laws permit, and if a citizen could do what they forbid he would no longer be possessed of liberty.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
Liberty is the right of doing whatever the laws permit.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
With truths of a certain kind, it is not enough to make them appear convincing: one must also make them felt. Of such kind are moral truths.
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A rational army would run away.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
If I knew something that would serve my country but would harm mankind, I would never reveal it; for I am a citizen of humanity first and by necessity, and a citizen of France second, and only by accident
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
It is always the adventurers who do great things, not the sovereigns of great empires.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
No kingdom has shed more blood than the kingdom of Christ.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
I have never known any distress that an hour’s reading did not relieve.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
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.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
I like peasants-they are not sophisticated enough to reason speciously.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
Europe is a state with several provinces
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
The Ottoman Empire whose sick body was not supported by a mild and regular diet, but by a powerful treatment, which continually exhausted it.
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