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When virtue is banished, ambition invades the minds of those who are disposed to receive it and avarice possesses the whole community.

Baron de Montesquieu

There are three species of government: republican, monarchical, and despotic.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Gambling Government Three
The deterioration of every government begins with the decay of the principles on which it was founded.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Honesty Integrity War
To love to read is to exchange hours of ennui for hours of delight.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Delight Hours Philosophical
Democracy is corrupted not only when the spirit of equality is corrupted, but likewise when they fall into a spirit of extreme equality.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Democracy Fall Spirit
With truths of a certain kind, it is not enough to make them appear convincing: one must also make them felt. Of such kind are moral truths.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Enough Kind Moral
In constitutional states, liberty is compensation for heavy taxes; in dictatorships, the subsititue is light taxes.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Liberty Light States
The less men think, the more they talk.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Men Philosophical Thinking
The crime against nature will never make any great progress in society unless people are prompted to it by some particular custom.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Crime People Progress
The severity of the laws prevents their execution.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Execution Law Philosophical
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
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
There are only two cases in which war is just: first, in order to resist the aggression of an enemy, and second, in order to help an ally who has been attacked.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Aggression Order Two War
Not to be loved is a misfortune, but it is an insult to be loved no longer.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Comeback Insult Sexuality
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
The Christian religion is a stranger to mere despotic power. The mildness so frequently recommended in the Gospel is incompatible with the despotic rage.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Christian Liberty Stranger
Human laws made to direct the will ought to give precepts, and not counsels.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Giving Law Made

When virtue is banished, ambition invades the minds of those who are disposed to receive it and avarice possesses the whole community.

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When virtue is banished, ambition invades the minds of those who are disposed to receive it and avarice possesses the whole community.

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Popular Authors

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