An empire founded by war has to maintain itself by war.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEUWherever I find envy I take a pleasure in provoking it: I always praise before an envious man those who make him grow pale.
More Baron de Montesquieu Quotes
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The history of commerce is that of the communication of the people.
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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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There are countries where a man is worth nothing; there are others where he is worth less than nothing.
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If the triangles made a god, they would give him three sides.
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A rational army would run away.
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When a government is arrived to that degree of corruption as to be incapable of reforming itself, it would not lose much by being new moulded.
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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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The public business must be carried on with a certain motion, neither too quick nor too slow.
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The coffee is prepared in such a way that it makes those who drink it witty: at least there is not a single soul who, on quitting the house, does not believe himself four times wittier that when he entered it.
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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.
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What orators lack in depth they make up for in length.
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Oh, how empty is praise when it reflects back to its origin!
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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.
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The harshest tyranny is that which acts under the protection of legality and the banner of justice.
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Vanity and pride of nations; vanity is as advantageous to a government as pride is dangerous.
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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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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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Slowness is frequently the cause of much greater slowness.
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The life of man is but a succession of vain hopes and groundless fears.
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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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There is something in animals beside the power of motion. They are not machines; they feel.
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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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…when the laws have ceased to be executed, as this can only come from the corruption of the republic, the state is already lost.
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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 become truly great, one has to stand with people, not above them.
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This punishment of death is the remedy, as it were, of a sick society.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU