The culminating point of administration is to know well how much power, great or small, we ought to use in all circumstances.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEUThere is still another inconvenieney in conquests made by democracies; their government is ever odious to the conquered states. It is apparently monarchical, but in reality it is more oppressive than monarchy, as the experience of all ages and countries evinces.
More Baron de Montesquieu Quotes
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The prejudices of superstition are superior to all others, and have the strongest influence on the human mind.
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Men in excess of happiness or misery are equally inclined to severity. Witness conquerors and monks! It is mediocrity alone, and a mixture of prosperous and adverse fortune that inspire us with lenity and pity.
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Political liberty in a citizen is that tranquillity of spirit which comes from the opinion each one has of his security, and in order for him to have this liberty the government must be such that one citizen cannot fear another citizen.
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The crime against nature will never make any great progress in society unless people are prompted to it by some particular custom.
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At our coming into the world we contract an immense debt to our country, which we can never discharge.
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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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In constitutional states, liberty is compensation for heavy taxes; in dictatorships, the subsititue is light taxes.
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What orators lack in depth they make up for in length.
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Laws undertake to punish only overt acts.
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Republics end through luxury; monarchies through poverty.
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In the infancy of societies, the chiefs of state shape its institutions; later the institutions shape the chiefs of state.
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There is no one, says another, whom fortune does not visit once in his life; but when she does not find him ready to receive her, she walks in at the door, and flies out at the window.
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If triangles had a god, he would have three sides.
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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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The spirit of moderation should also be the spirit of the lawgiver.
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Although born in a prosperous realm, we did not believe that its boundaries should limit our knowledge, and that the lore of the East should alone enlighten us.
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One more organ or one less in our body would give us a different intelligence. In fact, all the established laws as to why our body is a certain way would be different if our body were not that way.
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Slavery, properly so called, is the establishment of a right which gives to one man such a power over another as renders him absolute master of his life and fortune.
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This punishment of death is the remedy, as it were, of a sick society.
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Do you think that God will punish them for not practicing a religion which he did not reveal to them?
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The coffee is prepared in such a way that it makes those who drink it witty: at least there is not a single soul who, on quitting the house, does not believe himself four times wittier that when he entered it.
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We receive three educations, one from our parents, one from our school-masters, and one from the world. The third contradicts all that the first two teach us.
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It is always the adventurous who accomplish great things.
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A man who writes well writes not as others write, but as he himself writes; it is often in speaking badly that he speaks well.
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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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Republics come to an end by luxurious habits; monarchies by poverty.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU