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.
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
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There is a very good saying that if triangles invented a god, they would make him three-sided.
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To become truly great, one has to stand with people, not above them.
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Slowness is frequently the cause of much greater slowness.
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If you run after wit, you will succeed in catching folly.
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It is always the adventurers who do great things, not the sovereigns of great empires.
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When a government lasts a long while, it deteriorates by insensible degrees. Republics end through luxury, monarchies through poverty.
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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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When the body of the people is possessed of the supreme power, it is called a democracy.
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Society is the union of men and not the men themselves.
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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.
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Love of the republic in a democracy, is a love of the democracy; love of the democracy is that of equality. Love of the democracy is likewise that of frugality.
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A nation may lose its liberties in a day and not miss them in a century.
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Laws, in their most general signification, are the necessary relations derived from the nature of things.
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The less luxury there is in a republic, the more it is perfect.
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Nature is just to all mankind, and repays them for their industry. She renders them industrious by annexing rewards in proportion to their labor.
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