Countries are not cultivated in proportion to their fertility, but to their liberty.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEUThe reason the Romans built their great paved highways was because they had such inconvenient footwear.
More Baron de Montesquieu Quotes
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When virtue is banished, ambition invades the minds of those who are disposed to receive it and avarice possesses the whole community.
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Injustice towards others is a threat to everybody
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Honor sets all the parts of the body politic in motion, and by its very action connects them; thus each individual advances the public good, while he only thinks of promoting his own interest.
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The wickedness of mankind makes it necessary for the law to suppose them better than they really are.
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The history of commerce is that of the communication of the people.
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Human laws made to direct the will ought to give precepts, and not counsels.
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If one only wished to be happy, this could be easily accomplished; but we wish to be happier that other people, and this is always difficult, for we believe others to be happier than they are. you are comparing your lot with an ideal which is of course better and therefore you feel worse
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Power should be a check on power.
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The severity of the laws prevents their execution.
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Republics end through luxury; monarchies through poverty.
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Certain kinds of foolishness are such that a greater foolishness would be better.
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When God endowed human beings with brains, He did not intend to guarantee them.
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The tyranny of a prince in an oligarchy is not so dangerous to the public welfare as the apathy of a citizen in a democracy.
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Republics are brought to their ends by luxury; monarchies by poverty.
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Men, who are rogues individually, are in the mass very honorable people.
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Love of reading enables a man to exchange the weary hours, which come to every one, for hours of delight.
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When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person, or in the same body of magistrates, there can be no liberty; because apprehensions may arise, lest the same monarch or senate should enact tyrannical laws, to execute them in a tyrannical manner.
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The less men think, the more they talk.
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Life was given to me as a favor, so I may abandon it when it is one no longer.
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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.
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I should like to abolish funerals; the time to mourn a person is at his birth, not his death.
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Laws, in their most general signification, are the necessary relations derived from the nature of things.
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The laws do not take upon them to punish any other than overt acts.
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Slavery, properly so called, is the establishment of a right which gives to one man such a power over another as renders him absolute master of his life and fortune.
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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.
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I have never known any distress that an hour’s reading did not relieve.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU