In every government there are three sorts of power: the legislative; the executive in respect to things dependent on the law of nations; and the executive in regard to matters that depend on the civil law.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEURaillery is a mode of speaking in favor of one’s wit at the expense of one’s better nature.
More Baron de Montesquieu Quotes
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Liberty is the right to do what the law permits.
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Every man who has power is impelled to abuse it.
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Sometimes a man who deserves to be looked upon because he is a fool is despised only because he is a lawyer.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
Raillery is a mode of speaking in favor of one’s wit at the expense of one’s better nature.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
A fondness for reading changes the inevitable dull hours of our life into exquisite hours of delight.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
Those who have few affairs to attend to are great speakers. The less men think, the more they talk.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
That anyone who possesses power has a tendency to abuse it is an eternal truth. They tend to go as far as the barriers will allow.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
If you run after wit, you will succeed in catching folly.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
If you would be holy, instruct your children, because all the good acts they perform will be imputed to you.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
In constitutional states, liberty is compensation for heavy taxes; in dictatorships, the subsititue is light taxes.
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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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I have ever held it as a maxim never to do that through another which it was impossible for me to execute myself.
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Very good laws may be ill timed.
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Human laws made to direct the will ought to give precepts, and not counsels.
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






