Virtue in a republic is the love of one’s country, that is the love of equality.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEUYou have to study a great deal to know a little.
More Baron de Montesquieu Quotes
-
-
People here argue about religion interminably, but it appears that they are competing at the same time to see who can be the least devout.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
Republics come to an end by luxurious habits; monarchies by poverty.
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.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
I like peasants-they are not sophisticated enough to reason speciously.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
I suffer from the disease of writing books and being ashamed of them when they are finished.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
Solemnity is the shield of idiots
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
When we seek after wit, we discover only foolishness.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
What orators lack in depth they make up for in length.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
Great commanders write their actions with simplicity; because they receive more glory from facts than from words.
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.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
You have to study a great deal to know a little.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
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 -
Power should be a check on power.
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 -
Liberty is the right to do what the law permits.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU