There are three species of government: republican, monarchical, and despotic.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEUAs virtue is necessary in a republic, and honor in a monarchy, fear is what is required in a despotism. As for virtue, it is not at all necessary, and honor would be dangerous there.
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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Vanity and pride of nations; vanity is as advantageous to a government as pride is dangerous.
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In the state of nature… all men are born equal, but they cannot continue in this equality. Society makes them lose it, and they recover it only by the protection of the law.
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Better it is to say that the government most comfortable to nature is that which best agrees with the humor and disposition of the people in whose favor it is established.
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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.
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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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Law in general is human reason, inasmuch as it governs all the inhabitants of the earth: the political and civil laws of each nation ought to be only the particular cases in which human reason is applied.
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They who assert that a blind fatality produced the various effects we behold in this world talk very absurdly; for can anything be more unreasonable than to pretend that a blind fatality could be productive of intelligent beings.
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Great commanders write their actions with simplicity; because they receive more glory from facts than from words.
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Liberty is the right to do what the law permits.
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No kingdom has shed more blood than the kingdom of Christ.
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The severity of the laws prevents their execution.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
Wonderful maxim: not to talk of things any more after they are done.
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Politics are a smooth file, which cuts gradually, and attains its end by slow progression.
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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.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU