I acknowledge that history is full of religious wars: but we must distinguish; it is not the multiplicity of religions which has produced these wars; it was the intolerating spirit which animated that one which thought she had the power of governing.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEUThere is hardly any grief that an hour’s reading will not dissipate.
More Baron de Montesquieu Quotes
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Politics are a smooth file, which cuts gradually, and attains its end by slow progression.
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You have to study a great deal to know a little.
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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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There is as yet no liberty if the power of judging be not separated from legislative power and the executrix
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Power ought to serve as a check to power.
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I shall ever repeat it, that mankind are governed not by extremes, but by principals of moderation.
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I have read descriptions of Paradise that would make any sensible person stop wanting to go there.
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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.
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It is not the young people that degenerate; they are not spoiled till those of mature age are already sunk into corruption.
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Europe is a state with several provinces
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The success of most things depends upon knowing how long it will take to succeed.
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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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There is only one thing that can form a bond between men, and that is gratitude… we cannot give someone else greater power over us than we have ourselves.
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It is necessary from the very nature of things that power should be a check to power.
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As 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.
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False happiness renders men stern and proud, and that happiness is never communicated. True happiness renders them kind and sensible, and that happiness is always shared.
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Honor is unknown in despotic states.
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Each particular society begins to feel its strength, whence arises a state of war between different nations.
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Happy the people whose annals are tiresome.
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Men, who are rogues individually, are in the mass very honorable people.
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A fondness for reading changes the inevitable dull hours of our life into exquisite hours of delight.
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Not to be loved is a misfortune, but it is an insult to be loved no longer.
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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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No kingdom has shed more blood than the kingdom of Christ.
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Republics end through luxury; monarchies through poverty.
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The Ottoman Empire whose sick body was not supported by a mild and regular diet, but by a powerful treatment, which continually exhausted it.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU