Men should be bewailed at their birth, and not at their death.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEUCoffee renders many foolish people temporarily capable of wise actions
More Baron de Montesquieu Quotes
-
-
Virtue has needs of limits.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
Although born in a prosperous realm, we did not believe that its boundaries should limit our knowledge, and that the lore of the East should alone enlighten us.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
There is no one, says another, whom fortune does not visit once in his life; but when she does not find him ready to receive her, she walks in at the door, and flies out at the window.
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 -
There are only two cases in which war is just: first, in order to resist the aggression of an enemy, and second, in order to help an ally who has been attacked.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
At our coming into the world we contract an immense debt to our country, which we can never discharge.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
The majority of men are more capable of great actions than of good ones.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
The deterioration of every government begins with the decay of the principles on which it was founded.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
…when the laws have ceased to be executed, as this can only come from the corruption of the republic, the state is already lost.
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.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
There is something in animals beside the power of motion. They are not machines; they feel.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
It is clear that in a monarchy, where he who commands the exceution of the laws generally thinks himself above them, there is lessneed of virtue than in a popular government, where the person entrusted with the execution of the laws is sensible of his being subject to their direction.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
Fain would I glide down a gentle river, but I am carried away by a torrent.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
Wonderful maxim: not to talk of things any more after they are done.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
Republics come to an end by luxurious habits; monarchies by poverty.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
The state is the association of men, and not men themselves; the citizen may perish, and the man remain.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
This punishment of death is the remedy, as it were, of a sick society.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
False happiness renders men stern and proud, and that happiness is never communicated. True happiness renders them kind and sensible, and that happiness is always shared.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
Politics are a smooth file, which cuts gradually, and attains its end by slow progression.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
Friendship is a contract in which we render small services in expectation of big ones.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
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.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
Human laws made to direct the will ought to give precepts, and not counsels.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
Peace is a natural effect of trade.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
I suffer from the disease of writing books and being ashamed of them when they are finished.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
Power ought to serve as a check to power.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
In constitutional states, liberty is compensation for heavy taxes; in dictatorships, the subsititue is light taxes.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU