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Vanity and pride of nations; vanity is as advantageous to a government as pride is dangerous.

Baron de Montesquieu

Study has been for me the sovereign remedy against all the disappointments of life. I have never known any trouble that an hour’s reading would not dissipate.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Disappointment Reading Sovereign
Men, who are rogues individually, are in the mass very honorable people.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Men People Teamwork
Do you think that God will punish them for not practicing a religion which he did not reveal to them?
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

God Religion Thinking
It is necessary from the very nature of things that power should be a check to power.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Checks Power Should
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
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
Friendship is a contract in which we render small services in expectation of big ones.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Contract Expectation Friendship
If we only wanted to be happy, it would be easy; but we want to be happier than other people, and that is almost always difficult, since we think them happier than they are.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Difficult People Since Thinking
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
If the triangles made a god, they would give him three sides.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

God Philosophical Two Sides
Vanity and pride of nations; vanity is as advantageous to a government as pride is dangerous.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Government Pride Vanity
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
Slavery, properly so called, is the establishment of a right which gives to one man such a power over another as renders him absolute master of his life and fortune.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Giving Men Slavery
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
Happy the people whose annals are tiresome.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

History People Vacant
The wickedness of mankind makes it necessary for the law to suppose them better than they really are.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Law Mankind Wickedness

Vanity and pride of nations; vanity is as advantageous to a government as pride is dangerous.

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Vanity and pride of nations; vanity is as advantageous to a government as pride is dangerous.

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