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The culminating point of administration is to know well how much power, great or small, we ought to use in all circumstances.

Baron de Montesquieu

In the birth of societies it is the chiefs of states who give it its special character; and afterward it is this special character that forms the chiefs of state.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Character Giving Leadership
The majority of men are more capable of great actions than of good ones.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Deed Majority Men
Luxury ruins republics; poverty, monarchies.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Luxury Republic Tyrants
Each citizen contributes to the revenues of the State a portion of his property in order that his tenure of the rest may be secure.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Citizens May Order
Life was given to me as a favor, so I may abandon it when it is one no longer.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Favors Given May
A rational army would run away.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Army Running War
I shall ever repeat it, that mankind are governed not by extremes, but by principals of moderation.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Extremes Mankind Moderation
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

Powerful Sick
Love of reading enables a man to exchange the weary hours, which come to every one, for hours of delight.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Library Men Reading
There is hardly any grief that an hour’s reading will not dissipate.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Grief Hours Reading
Men in excess of happiness or misery are equally inclined to severity. Witness conquerors and monks! It is mediocrity alone, and a mixture of prosperous and adverse fortune that inspire us with lenity and pity.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Inspire Men Mixtures
If triangles had a god, he would have three sides.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

God Three Triangles
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 MONTESQUIEU

Believe Miracle Vanity
The pagan religion, which prohibited only some of the grosser crimes, and which stopped the hand but meddled not with the heart, might have crimes that were inexplicable.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Hands Heart might
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.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

God Nature Science
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

Envy Men Praise

The culminating point of administration is to know well how much power, great or small, we ought to use in all circumstances.

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The culminating point of administration is to know well how much power, great or small, we ought to use in all circumstances.

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Popular Authors

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