There is still another inconvenieney in conquests made by democracies; their government is ever odious to the conquered states. It is apparently monarchical, but in reality it is more oppressive than monarchy, as the experience of all ages and countries evinces.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEUOne more organ or one less in our body would give us a different intelligence. In fact, all the established laws as to why our body is a certain way would be different if our body were not that way.
More Baron de Montesquieu Quotes
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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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The English are busy folk; they have no time in which to be polite.
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I like peasants-they are not sophisticated enough to reason speciously.
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The deterioration of every government begins with the decay of the principles on which it was founded.
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Religious wars are not caused by the fact that there is more than one religion, but by the spirit of intolerance… the spread of which can only be regarded as the total eclipse of human reason.
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Although born in a prosperous realm, we did not believe that its boundaries should limit our knowledge, and that the lore of the East should alone enlighten us.
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Political liberty is to be found only in moderate governments.
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Never create by law what can be accomplished by morality.
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A man who writes well writes not as others write, but as he himself writes; it is often in speaking badly that he speaks well.
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If the triangles made a god, they would give him three sides.
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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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Very good laws may be ill timed.
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The coffee is prepared in such a way that it makes those who drink it witty: at least there is not a single soul who, on quitting the house, does not believe himself four times wittier that when he entered it.
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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.
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The tyranny of a prince in an oligarchy is not so dangerous to the public welfare as the apathy of a citizen in a democracy.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU