The English are busy; they don’t have time to be polite.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEUThe less luxury there is in a republic, the more it is perfect.
More Baron de Montesquieu Quotes
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Mediocrity is a hand-rail.
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Each citizen contributes to the revenues of the State a portion of his property in order that his tenure of the rest may be secure.
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The life of man is but a succession of vain hopes and groundless fears.
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As soon as man enters into a state of society he loses the sense of his weakness; equality ceases, and then commences the state of war.
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The less men think, the more they talk.
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When a government is arrived to that degree of corruption as to be incapable of reforming itself, it would not lose much by being new moulded.
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To succeed in the world we must look foolish but be wise.
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The deterioration of every government begins with the decay of the principles on which it was founded.
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Liberty itself has appeared intolerable to those nations who have not been accustomed to enjoy it.
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To love to read is to exchange hours of ennui for hours of delight.
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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.
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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.
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To become truly great, one has to stand with people, not above them.
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We ought to be very cautious and circumspect in the prosecution of magic and heresy. The attempt to put down these two crimes may be extremely perilous to liberty.
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It is necessary from the very nature of things that power should be a check to power.
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Luxury ruins republics; poverty, monarchies.
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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.
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The culminating point of administration is to know well how much power, great or small, we ought to use in all circumstances.
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With truths of a certain kind, it is not enough to make them appear convincing: one must also make them felt. Of such kind are moral truths.
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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.
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An author is a fool who, not content with boring those he lives with, insists on boring future generations.
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…when the laws have ceased to be executed, as this can only come from the corruption of the republic, the state is already lost.
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An empire founded by war has to maintain itself by war.
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But constant experience shows us that every man invested with power is apt to abuse it, and to carry his authority as far as it will go.
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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.
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In constitutional states, liberty is compensation for heavy taxes; in dictatorships, the subsititue is light taxes.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU