Luxury ruins republics; poverty, monarchies.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEUDemocracy 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.
More Baron de Montesquieu Quotes
-
-
Useless laws weaken the necessary laws.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
There are three species of government: republican, monarchical, and despotic.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
It is always the adventurers who do great things, not the sovereigns of great empires.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
In a republic there is no coercive force as in other governments, the laws must therefore endeavor to supply this defect.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
It is always the adventurous who accomplish great things.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
It is requisite the government be so constituted as one man need not be afraid of another.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
The deterioration of every government begins with the decay of the principles on which it was founded.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
Those who have few affairs to attend to are great speakers. The less men think, the more they talk.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
Passion makes us feel, but never see clearly.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
Life was given to me as a favor, so I may abandon it when it is one no longer.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
The English are busy folk; they have no time in which to be polite.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
There is hardly any grief that an hour’s reading will not dissipate.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
There should be weeping at a man’s birth, not at his death.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
The harshest tyranny is that which acts under the protection of legality and the banner of justice.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
The less men think, the more they talk.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU