Wherever I find envy I take a pleasure in provoking it: I always praise before an envious man those who make him grow pale.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU…when the laws have ceased to be executed, as this can only come from the corruption of the republic, the state is already lost.
More Baron de Montesquieu Quotes
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Virtue in a republic is the love of one’s country, that is the love of equality.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
Nature is just to all mankind, and repays them for their industry. She renders them industrious by annexing rewards in proportion to their labor.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
It is always the adventurers who do great things, not the sovereigns of great empires.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
When virtue is banished, ambition invades the minds of those who are disposed to receive it and avarice possesses the whole community.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
The less men think, the more they talk.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
Trade is the best cure for prejudice.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
Religious wars are not caused by the fact that there is more than one religion, but by the spirit of intolerance… the spread of which can only be regarded as the total eclipse of human reason.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
Luxury ruins republics; poverty, monarchies.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
Wonderful maxim: not to talk of things any more after they are done.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
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.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
There are bad examples which are worse than crimes; and more states have perished from the violation of morality than from the violation of law.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
When a government lasts a long while, it deteriorates by insensible degrees. Republics end through luxury, monarchies through poverty.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
When the body of the people is possessed of the supreme power, it is called a democracy.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
Liberty is the right of doing whatever the laws permit.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
When a government is arrived to that degree of corruption as to be incapable of reforming itself, it would not lose much by being new moulded.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU






