If you would be holy, instruct your children, because all the good acts they perform will be imputed to you.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEUThe state is the association of men, and not men themselves; the citizen may perish, and the man remain.
More Baron de Montesquieu Quotes
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The public business must be carried on with a certain motion, neither too quick nor too slow.
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An injustice to one is a threat made to all
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
There should be weeping at a man’s birth, not at his death.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
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 false notion of miracles comes of our vanity, which makes us believe we are important enough for the Supreme Being to upset nature on our behalf.
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If I knew of something that could serve my nation but would ruin another, I would not propose it to my prince, for I am first a man and only then a Frenchman… because I am necessarily a man, and only accidentally am I French.
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Man is a social animal formed to please in society.
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I have never known any distress that an hour’s reading did not relieve.
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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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Laws, in their most general signification, are the necessary relations arising from the nature of things. In this sense all beings have their laws: the Deity His laws, the material world its laws, the intelligences superior to man their laws, the beasts their laws, man his laws.
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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.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
It is unreasonable … to oblige a man not to attempt the defense of his own life.
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Human laws made to direct the will ought to give precepts, and not counsels.
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In republican governments, men are all equal; equal they are also in despotic governments: in the former, because they are everything; in the latter, because they are nothing.
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Sometimes a man who deserves to be looked upon because he is a fool is despised only because he is a lawyer.
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Power should be a check on power.
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An empire founded by war has to maintain itself by war.
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A nation may lose its liberties in a day and not miss them in a century.
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The alms given to a naked man in the street do not fulfil the obligations of the state, which owes to every citizen a certain subsistence, a proper nourishment, convenient clothing, and a kind of life not incompatible with health.
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If you run after wit, you will succeed in catching folly.
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There is something in animals beside the power of motion. They are not machines; they feel.
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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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Success in the majority of circumstances depends on knowing how long it takes to succeed.
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A rational army would run away.
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There have never been so many civil wars as in the Kingdom of Christ.
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In constitutional states, liberty is compensation for heavy taxes; in dictatorships, the subsititue is light taxes.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU