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There is no crueler tyranny than that which is perpetuated under the shield of law and in the name of justice.

Baron de Montesquieu

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

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

Honesty Integrity War
In republican governments, men are all equal; equal they are also in despotic governments: in the former, because they are everything; in the latter, because they are nothing.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Men Politics Republican
Power ought to serve as a check to power.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Checks Ought Power
The success of most things depends upon knowing how long it will take to succeed.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Knowing Long Success
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
Luxury ruins republics; poverty, monarchies.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Luxury Republic Tyrants
In the infancy of societies, the chiefs of state shape its institutions; later the institutions shape the chiefs of state.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Institutions Shapes States
The pagan religion, which prohibited only some of the grosser crimes, and which stopped the hand but meddled not with the heart, might have crimes that were inexplicable.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Hands Heart might
Man, as a physical being, is like other bodies governed by invariable laws.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Humanity Law Men
The love of study is in us the only lasting passion. All the others quit us in proportion as this miserable machine which holds them approaches its ruins.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Machines Passion Ruins
There is only one thing that can form a bond between men, and that is gratitude… we cannot give someone else greater power over us than we have ourselves.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Gratitude Men Ties
There have never been so many civil wars as in the Kingdom of Christ.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Civil War Kingdoms War
Liberty… is there only when there is no abuse of power.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Abuse Liberty Power
Religious wars are not caused by the fact that there is more than one religion, but by the spirit of intolerance… the spread of which can only be regarded as the total eclipse of human reason.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Religion Religious War
One more organ or one less in our body would give us a different intelligence. In fact, all the established laws as to why our body is a certain way would be different if our body were not that way.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Body Giving Law

There is no crueler tyranny than that which is perpetuated under the shield of law and in the name of justice.

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There is no crueler tyranny than that which is perpetuated under the shield of law and in the name of justice.

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Popular Authors

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