Countries are well cultivated, not as they are fertile, but as they are free.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEUThere is no crueler tyranny than that which is perpetuated under the shield of law and in the name of justice.
More Baron de Montesquieu Quotes
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Happy the people whose annals are tiresome.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
An empire founded by war has to maintain itself by war.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
Power ought to serve as a check to power.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
To love to read is to exchange hours of ennui for hours of delight.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
A good writer does not write as people write, but as he writes.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
I have never known any distress that an hour’s reading did not relieve.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
Liberty is the right to do what the law permits.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
It is not the young people that degenerate; they are not spoiled till those of mature age are already sunk into corruption.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
The incomparable stupidity of life teaches us to love our parents; divine philosophy teaches us to forgive them.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
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 -
Men in excess of happiness or misery are equally inclined to severity. Witness conquerors and monks! It is mediocrity alone, and a mixture of prosperous and adverse fortune that inspire us with lenity and pity.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
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 -
If I knew something that would serve my country but would harm mankind, I would never reveal it; for I am a citizen of humanity first and by necessity, and a citizen of France second, and only by accident
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
Law in general is human reason, inasmuch as it governs all the inhabitants of the earth: the political and civil laws of each nation ought to be only the particular cases in which human reason is applied.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
I acknowledge that history is full of religious wars: but we must distinguish; it is not the multiplicity of religions which has produced these wars; it was the intolerating spirit which animated that one which thought she had the power of governing.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU