An author is a fool who, not content with boring those he lives with, insists on boring future generations.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEUSometimes a man who deserves to be looked upon because he is a fool is despised only because he is a lawyer.
More Baron de Montesquieu Quotes
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Political liberty is to be found only in moderate governments.
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The love of study is in us the only lasting passion. All the others quit us in proportion as this miserable machine which holds them approaches its ruins.
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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 success of most things depends upon knowing how long it will take to succeed.
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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 English are busy folk; they have no time in which to be polite.
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We must have constantly present in our minds the difference between independence and liberty. Liberty is a right of doing whatever the laws permit, and if a citizen could do what they forbid he would no longer be possessed of liberty.
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Power ought to serve as a check to power.
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The severity of the laws prevents their execution.
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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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Happy the people whose annals are tiresome.
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There is no crueler tyranny than that which is perpetuated under the shield of law and in the name of justice.
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The incomparable stupidity of life teaches us to love our parents; divine philosophy teaches us to forgive them.
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Laws undertake to punish only overt acts.
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A good writer does not write as people write, but as he writes.
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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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To 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.
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The less men think, the more they talk.
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Injustice towards others is a threat to everybody
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In every government there are three sorts of power: the legislative; the executive in respect to things dependent on the law of nations; and the executive in regard to matters that depend on the civil law.
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Vitam Impendere Vero (I consecrate my life to truth).
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Solemnity is the shield of idiots
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You have to study a great deal to know a little.
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Raillery is a mode of speaking in favor of one’s wit at the expense of one’s better nature.
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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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The law of nations is naturally founded on this principle, that different nations ought in time of peace to do one another all the good they can, and in time of war as little injury as possible, without prejudicing their real interests.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU