The English are busy; they don’t have time to be polite.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEULuxury ruins republics; poverty, monarchies.
More Baron de Montesquieu Quotes
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If triangles had a god, he would have three sides.
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Wherever I find envy I take a pleasure in provoking it: I always praise before an envious man those who make him grow pale.
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But constant experience shows us that every man invested with power is apt to abuse it, and to carry his authority as far as it will go.
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In constitutional states, liberty is compensation for heavy taxes; in dictatorships, the subsititue is light taxes.
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They who assert that a blind fatality produced the various effects we behold in this world talk very absurdly; for can anything be more unreasonable than to pretend that a blind fatality could be productive of intelligent beings.
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It is unreasonable … to oblige a man not to attempt the defense of his own life.
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What orators lack in depth they make up for in length.
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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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Virtue has needs of limits.
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Certain kinds of foolishness are such that a greater foolishness would be better.
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The less luxury there is in a republic, the more it is perfect.
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False happiness renders men stern and proud, and that happiness is never communicated. True happiness renders them kind and sensible, and that happiness is always shared.
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Laws undertake to punish only overt acts.
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The incomparable stupidity of life teaches us to love our parents; divine philosophy teaches us to forgive them.
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The sublimity of administration consists in knowing the proper degree of power that should be exerted on different occasions.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU






