There is something in animals beside the power of motion. They are not machines; they feel.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEUPassion makes us feel, but never see clearly.
More Baron de Montesquieu Quotes
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The English are busy; they don’t have time to be polite.
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What orators lack in depth they make up for in length.
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Liberty is the right of doing whatever the laws permit.
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Men, who are rogues individually, are in the mass very honorable people.
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There is a very good saying that if triangles invented a god, they would make him three-sided.
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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.
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There is as yet no liberty if the power of judging be not separated from legislative power and the executrix
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Great commanders write their actions with simplicity; because they receive more glory from facts than from words.
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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.
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Men should be bewailed at their birth, and not at their death.
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Friendship is an arrangement by which we undertake to exchange small favors for big ones.
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Coffee renders many foolish people temporarily capable of wise actions
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If you would be holy, instruct your children, because all the good acts they perform will be imputed to you.
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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.
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Man is a social animal formed to please in society.
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There are bad examples which are worse than crimes; and more states have perished from the violation of morality than from the violation of law.
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Mediocrity is a hand-rail.
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There is no crueler tyranny than that which is perpetuated under the shield of law and in the name of justice.
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The harshest tyranny is that which acts under the protection of legality and the banner of justice.
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Certain kinds of foolishness are such that a greater foolishness would be better.
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In a republic there is no coercive force as in other governments, the laws must therefore endeavor to supply this defect.
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Each particular society begins to feel its strength, whence arises a state of war between different nations.
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It is clear that in a monarchy, where he who commands the exceution of the laws generally thinks himself above them, there is lessneed of virtue than in a popular government, where the person entrusted with the execution of the laws is sensible of his being subject to their direction.
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It is always the adventurers who do great things, not the sovereigns of great empires.
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Wonderful maxim: not to talk of things any more after they are done.
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I never listen to calumnies, because if they are untrue I run the risk of being deceived, and if they be true, of hating persons not worth thinking about.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU