I suffer from the disease of writing books and being ashamed of them when they are finished.
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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If triangles had a god, he would have three sides.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
I have read descriptions of Paradise that would make any sensible person stop wanting to go there.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
Mediocrity is a hand-rail.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
There are bad examples which are worse than crimes; and more states have perished from the violation of morality than from the violation of law.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
Never create by law what can be accomplished by morality.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
If I knew something that would serve my country but would harm mankind, I would never reveal it; for I am a citizen of humanity first and by necessity, and a citizen of France second, and only by accident
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
Man is a social animal formed to please in society.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
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.
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 -
There are three species of government: republican, monarchical, and despotic.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
I have always observed that to succeed in the world one should seem a fool, but be wise.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
I have ever held it as a maxim never to do that through another which it was impossible for me to execute myself.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
I have never known any distress that an hour’s reading did not relieve.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
In republican governments, men are all equal; equal they are also in despotic governments: in the former, because they are everything; in the latter, because they are nothing.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
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.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU