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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

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

Cutting Politics Progression Smooth
[The Pope] will make the king believe that three are only one, that the bread he eats is not bread… and a thousand other things of the same kind.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Believe Kings Religion
That anyone who possesses power has a tendency to abuse it is an eternal truth. They tend to go as far as the barriers will allow.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Abuse Peace Tendencies
Man is a social animal formed to please in society.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Animal Men Society
The wickedness of mankind makes it necessary for the law to suppose them better than they really are.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Law Mankind Wickedness
An injustice to one is a threat made to all
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Injustice Made Threat
In the state of nature… all men are born equal, but they cannot continue in this equality. Society makes them lose it, and they recover it only by the protection of the law.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Equality Law Men
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
Laws, in their most general signification, are the necessary relations derived from the nature of things.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Law Relation
Republics come to an end by luxurious habits; monarchies by poverty.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Politics Republic Wisdom
Raillery is a mode of speaking in favor of one’s wit at the expense of one’s better nature.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Favors Talking Wit
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
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
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
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 prejudices of superstition are superior to all others, and have the strongest influence on the human mind.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Mind Prejudice Superstitions
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
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

Education School Two
The harshest tyranny is that which acts under the protection of legality and the banner of justice.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Justice Protection Tyranny
The love of study is in us the only lasting passion. All the others quit us in proportion as this miserable machine which holds them approaches its ruins.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Machines Passion Ruins
There is no one, says another, whom fortune does not visit once in his life; but when she does not find him ready to receive her, she walks in at the door, and flies out at the window.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Another Doors Fortune Window
Life was given to me as a favor, so I may abandon it when it is one no longer.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Favors Given May
There is a very good saying that if triangles invented a god, they would make him three-sided.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Mathematics Three Triangles
Trade is the best cure for prejudice.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Cures Prejudice Trade
To lend money without interest, is certainly an action laudable and extremely good; but it is obvious, that it is only a counsel of religion, and not a civil law.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Action Law Lending
I have never known any distress that an hour’s reading did not relieve.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Fearless Philosophical Reading
There is something in animals beside the power of motion. They are not machines; they feel.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Animal Compassion Power

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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