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The severity of the laws prevents their execution.

Baron de Montesquieu

The deterioration of every government begins with the decay of the principles on which it was founded.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Honesty Integrity War
I shall be obliged to wander to the right and to the left, that I may investigate and discover the truth.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

May Obliged Wander
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
Virtue has needs of limits.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Limits Needs Virtue
At our coming into the world we contract an immense debt to our country, which we can never discharge.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Country Debt World
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
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 sublimity of administration consists in knowing the proper degree of power that should be exerted on different occasions.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Degrees Different Knowing
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
Success in the majority of circumstances depends on knowing how long it takes to succeed.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Philosophical Success Time
The Christian religion is a stranger to mere despotic power. The mildness so frequently recommended in the Gospel is incompatible with the despotic rage.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Christian Liberty Stranger
Laws undertake to punish only overt acts.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Law Overt Punish Undertake
There should be weeping at a man’s birth, not at his death.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Birth Death Men Weep
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

Differences Independence Law
There is no crueler tyranny than that which is perpetuated under the shield of law and in the name of justice.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Law Name Tyrant
Men should be bewailed at their birth, and not at their death.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Birth Men Philosophical

The severity of the laws prevents their execution.

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The severity of the laws prevents their execution.

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