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It is always the adventurers who do great things, not the sovereigns of great empires.

Baron de Montesquieu

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 are countries where a man is worth nothing; there are others where he is worth less than nothing.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Country Men Nothing Worth
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
Never create by law what can be accomplished by morality.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Courage Law Morality
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
It is necessary from the very nature of things that power should be a check to power.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Checks Power Should
As men are affected in all ages by the same passions, the occasions which bring about great changes are different, but the causes are always the same.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Age Men Passion
Laws, in their most general signification, are the necessary relations arising from the nature of things. In this sense all beings have their laws: the Deity His laws, the material world its laws, the intelligences superior to man their laws, the beasts their laws, man his laws.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

God Nature Science
[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
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
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
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 reason the Romans built their great paved highways was because they had such inconvenient footwear.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Highway Philosophical Reason
Peace is a natural effect of trade.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Natural Philosophical Trade
There is a very good saying that if triangles invented a god, they would make him three-sided.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Mathematics Three Triangles

It is always the adventurers who do great things, not the sovereigns of great empires.

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It is always the adventurers who do great things, not the sovereigns of great empires.

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