If you run after wit, you will succeed in catching folly.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEUIt is necessary from the very nature of things that power should be a check to power.
More Baron de Montesquieu Quotes
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Man is a social animal formed to please in society.
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Liberty itself has appeared intolerable to those nations who have not been accustomed to enjoy it.
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The love of study is in us the only lasting passion. All the others quit us in proportion as this miserable machine which holds them approaches its ruins.
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There is something in animals beside the power of motion. They are not machines; they feel.
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I should like to abolish funerals; the time to mourn a person is at his birth, not his death.
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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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To succeed in the world we must look foolish but be wise.
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Oh, how empty is praise when it reflects back to its origin!
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Happy the people whose annals are tiresome.
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Each particular society begins to feel its strength, whence arises a state of war between different nations.
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The spirit of moderation should also be the spirit of the lawgiver.
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Every man who has power is impelled to abuse it.
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I like peasants-they are not sophisticated enough to reason speciously.
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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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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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There is hardly any grief that an hour’s reading will not dissipate.
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I have never known any distress that an hour’s reading did not relieve.
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The less luxury there is in a republic, the more it is perfect.
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Ever since the invention of gunpowder.. I continually tremble lest men should, in the end, uncover some secret which would provide a short way of abolishing mankind, of annihilating peoples and nations in their entirety.
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Raillery is a mode of speaking in favor of one’s wit at the expense of one’s better nature.
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The English are busy folk; they have no time in which to be polite.
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Republics come to an end by luxurious habits; monarchies by poverty.
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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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An empire founded by war has to maintain itself by war.
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The harshest tyranny is that which acts under the protection of legality and the banner of justice.
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There is no one, says another, whom fortune does not visit once in his life; but when she does not find him ready to receive her, she walks in at the door, and flies out at the window.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU