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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

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

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

Gambling Government Three
If I knew of something that could serve my nation but would ruin another, I would not propose it to my prince, for I am first a man and only then a Frenchman… because I am necessarily a man, and only accidentally am I French.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Firsts Men Ruin
Politics are a smooth file, which cuts gradually, and attains its end by slow progression.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Cutting Politics Progression Smooth
In bodies moved, the motion is received, increased, diminished, or lost, according to the relations of the quantity of matter and velocity; each diversity is uniformity, each change is constancy.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Body Diversity Movement
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
Talent is a gift which God has given us secretly, and which we reveal without perceiving it.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Given Philosophical Talent
Laws undertake to punish only overt acts.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Law Overt Punish Undertake
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.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Blind Intelligent World
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
Virtue has needs of limits.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Limits Needs Virtue
Thus the creation, which seems an arbitrary act, supposes laws as invariable as those of the fatality of the Atheists. It would be absurd to say that the Creator might govern the world without those rules, since without them it could not subsist.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Atheism Atheist Law
Men, who are rogues individually, are in the mass very honorable people.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Men People Teamwork
Lunch kills half of Paris, supper the other half.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Lunch Paris Philosophical
Better it is to say that the government most comfortable to nature is that which best agrees with the humor and disposition of the people in whose favor it is established.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Favor Government People
Mediocrity is a hand-rail.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Confidence Hands Mediocrity

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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