Virtue in a republic is the love of one’s country, that is the love of equality.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEUTo lend money without interest, is certainly an action laudable and extremely good; but it is obvious, that it is only a counsel of religion, and not a civil law.
More Baron de Montesquieu Quotes
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There is something in animals beside the power of motion. They are not machines; they feel.
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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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An author is a fool who, not content with boring those he lives with, insists on boring future generations.
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Countries are not cultivated in proportion to their fertility, but to their liberty.
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I never listen to calumnies, because if they are untrue I run the risk of being deceived, and if they be true, of hating persons not worth thinking about.
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The deterioration of every government begins with the decay of the principles on which it was founded.
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It is rare to find learned men who are clean, do not stink and have a sense of humour.
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What unhappy beings men are! They constantly waver between false hopes and silly fears, and instead of relying on reason they create monsters to frighten themselves with, and phantoms which lead them astray.
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Useless laws weaken the necessary laws.
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Mediocrity is a hand-rail.
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Republics are brought to their ends by luxury; monarchies by poverty.
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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.
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Laws, in their most general signification, are the necessary relations arising from the nature of things. In this sense all beings have their laws: the Deity His laws, the material world its laws, the intelligences superior to man their laws, the beasts their laws, man his laws.
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Oh, how empty is praise when it reflects back to its origin!
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When the body of the people is possessed of the supreme power, it is called a democracy.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU






