It is always the adventurers who do great things, not the sovereigns of great empires.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEUA really intelligent man feels what other men only know.
More Baron de Montesquieu Quotes
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There is something in animals beside the power of motion. They are not machines; they feel.
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For a country, everything will be lost when the jobs of an economist and a banker become highly respected professions.
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Liberty is the right of doing whatever the laws permit.
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When God endowed human beings with brains, He did not intend to guarantee them.
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The public business must be carried on with a certain motion, neither too quick nor too slow.
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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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The false notion of miracles comes of our vanity, which makes us believe we are important enough for the Supreme Being to upset nature on our behalf.
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Those who have few affairs to attend to are great speakers. The less men think, the more they talk.
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If we only wanted to be happy, it would be easy; but we want to be happier than other people, and that is almost always difficult, since we think them happier than they are.
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Slowness is frequently the cause of much greater slowness.
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The life of man is but a succession of vain hopes and groundless fears.
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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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Talent is a gift which God has given us secretly, and which we reveal without perceiving it.
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In the birth of societies it is the chiefs of states who give it its special character; and afterward it is this special character that forms the chiefs of state.
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Liberty is the right to do what the law permits.
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Certain kinds of foolishness are such that a greater foolishness would be better.
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That anyone who possesses power has a tendency to abuse it is an eternal truth. They tend to go as far as the barriers will allow.
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The reason the Romans built their great paved highways was because they had such inconvenient footwear.
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Political liberty is to be found only in moderate governments.
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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
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Useless laws weaken the necessary laws.
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Ever since the invention of gunpowder.. I continually tremble lest men should, in the end, uncover some secret which would provide a short way of abolishing mankind, of annihilating peoples and nations in their entirety.
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Slavery, properly so called, is the establishment of a right which gives to one man such a power over another as renders him absolute master of his life and fortune.
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I never listen to calumnies, because if they are untrue I run the risk of being deceived, and if they be true, of hating persons not worth thinking about.
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At our coming into the world we contract an immense debt to our country, which we can never discharge.
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Luxury ruins republics; poverty, monarchies.
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