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.
If we only wanted to be happy, it would be easy; but we want to be happier than other people, and that is almost always difficult, since we think them happier than they are.
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 Quote - [The Pope] will make the king believe that three are only one, that the bread he eats is not bread… and a thousand other things of the same kind.](https://minimalistquotes.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/the-pope-will-make-the-king-believe-that-three-are-683x1024.jpg)
