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We receive three educations, one from our parents, one from our school-masters, and one from the world. The third contradicts all that the first two teach us.

Baron de Montesquieu

The less luxury there is in a republic, the more it is perfect.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Luxury Perfect Republic
One 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.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Body Giving Law
Men should be bewailed at their birth, and not at their death.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Birth Men Philosophical
When a government is arrived to that degree of corruption as to be incapable of reforming itself, it would not lose much by being new moulded.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Corruption Degrees Government
If you would be holy, instruct your children, because all the good acts they perform will be imputed to you.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Children Holy Imputed Instruct Perform
A good writer does not write as people write, but as he writes.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

People Style Writing
Man is a social animal formed to please in society.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Animal Men Society
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
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.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Abuse Authority Men
The state is the association of men, and not men themselves; the citizen may perish, and the man remain.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Citizens Men Society
Virtue has needs of limits.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Limits Needs Virtue
Democracy has two excesses to avoid: the spirit of inequality, which leads to an aristocracy, or to the government of a single individual; and the spirit of extreme equality, which conducts it to despotism, as the despotism of a single individual finishes by conquest.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Democracies Government Wisdom
Europe is a state with several provinces
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Country Province Several State
A really intelligent man feels what other men only know.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Feels Intelligent Men
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
When one wants to change manners and customs, one should not do so by changing the laws.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Law Manners Want

We receive three educations, one from our parents, one from our school-masters, and one from the world. The third contradicts all that the first two teach us.

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We receive three educations, one from our parents, one from our school-masters, and one from the world. The third contradicts all that the first two teach us.

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Popular Authors

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