When God endowed human beings with brains, He did not intend to guarantee them.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEUIt is always the adventurous who accomplish great things.
More Baron de Montesquieu Quotes
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The law of nations is naturally founded on this principle, that different nations ought in time of peace to do one another all the good they can, and in time of war as little injury as possible, without prejudicing their real interests.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
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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When one wants to change manners and customs, one should not do so by changing the laws.
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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 -
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.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
Human laws made to direct the will ought to give precepts, and not counsels.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
Friendship is an arrangement by which we undertake to exchange small favors for big ones.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
There is as yet no liberty if the power of judging be not separated from legislative power and the executrix
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
In every government there are three sorts of power: the legislative; the executive in respect to things dependent on the law of nations; and the executive in regard to matters that depend on the civil law.
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We must have constantly present in our minds the difference between independence and liberty. Liberty is a right of doing whatever the laws permit, and if a citizen could do what they forbid he would no longer be possessed of liberty.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
The life of man is but a succession of vain hopes and groundless fears.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
There is still another inconvenieney in conquests made by democracies; their government is ever odious to the conquered states. It is apparently monarchical, but in reality it is more oppressive than monarchy, as the experience of all ages and countries evinces.
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It is always the adventurers who do great things, not the sovereigns of great empires.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
Success in the majority of circumstances depends on knowing how long it takes to succeed.
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The state is the association of men, and not men themselves; the citizen may perish, and the man remain.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU