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The wickedness of mankind makes it necessary for the law to suppose them better than they really are.

Baron de Montesquieu

The history of commerce is that of the communication of the people.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Commerce Communication People
The English are busy; they don’t have time to be polite.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Busy English Polite Time
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

Nature Proportion Rewards
Those who have few affairs to attend to are great speakers. The less men think, the more they talk.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Men Talking Thinking
Politics are a smooth file, which cuts gradually, and attains its end by slow progression.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Cutting Politics Progression Smooth
Laws undertake to punish only overt acts.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Law Overt Punish Undertake
A nation may lose its liberties in a day and not miss them in a century.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Freedom Liberty Missing
…when the laws have ceased to be executed, as this can only come from the corruption of the republic, the state is already lost.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Corruption Law Republic
When God endowed human beings with brains, He did not intend to guarantee them.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Brain Guarantees Humans
The success of most things depends upon knowing how long it will take to succeed.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Knowing Long Success
Mediocrity is a hand-rail.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Confidence Hands Mediocrity
There is a very good saying that if triangles invented a god, they would make him three-sided.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Mathematics Three Triangles
It is requisite the government be so constituted as one man need not be afraid of another.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Government Men Needs
When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person, or in the same body of magistrates, there can be no liberty; because apprehensions may arise, lest the same monarch or senate should enact tyrannical laws, to execute them in a tyrannical manner.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Law Liberty Umpires
The state of slavery is in its own nature bad.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Bad Nature Slavery States
If we only wanted to be happy, it would be easy; but we want to be happier than other people, and that is almost always difficult, since we think them happier than they are.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Difficult People Since Thinking

The wickedness of mankind makes it necessary for the law to suppose them better than they really are.

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The wickedness of mankind makes it necessary for the law to suppose them better than they really are.

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