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Happy the people whose annals are tiresome.

Baron de Montesquieu

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

Liberty Light States
I acknowledge that history is full of religious wars: but we must distinguish; it is not the multiplicity of religions which has produced these wars; it was the intolerating spirit which animated that one which thought she had the power of governing.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Religious Spirit War
Virtue has needs of limits.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Limits Needs Virtue
We must have constantly present in our minds the difference between independence and liberty. Liberty is a right of doing whatever the laws permit, and if a citizen could do what they forbid he would no longer be possessed of liberty.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Differences Independence Law
Republics are brought to their ends by luxury; monarchies by poverty.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Luxury Poverty Republic
The success of most things depends upon knowing how long it will take to succeed.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Knowing Long Success
To love to read is to exchange hours of ennui for hours of delight.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Delight Hours Philosophical
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

Ambition Community Mind
When a government lasts a long while, it deteriorates by insensible degrees. Republics end through luxury, monarchies through poverty.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Government Long Luxury
Honor sets all the parts of the body politic in motion, and by its very action connects them; thus each individual advances the public good, while he only thinks of promoting his own interest.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Body Honor Thinking
The alms given to a naked man in the street do not fulfil the obligations of the state, which owes to every citizen a certain subsistence, a proper nourishment, convenient clothing, and a kind of life not incompatible with health.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Citizens Men Naked
The sublimity of administration consists in knowing the proper degree of power that should be exerted on different occasions.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Degrees Different Knowing
When the savages of Louisiana wish to have fruit, they cut the tree at the bottom and gather the fruit. That is exactly a despotic government.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Cutting Government Tree
An empire founded by war has to maintain itself by war.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Empires Peace War
Countries are not cultivated in proportion to their fertility, but to their liberty.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Country Fertility Liberty
In republican governments, men are all equal; equal they are also in despotic governments: in the former, because they are everything; in the latter, because they are nothing.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Men Politics Republican

Happy the people whose annals are tiresome.

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Happy the people whose annals are tiresome.

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