When a government lasts a long while, it deteriorates by insensible degrees. Republics end through luxury, monarchies through poverty.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEUThere should be weeping at a man’s birth, not at his death.
More Baron de Montesquieu Quotes
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Not to be loved is a misfortune, but it is an insult to be loved no longer.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
The mood and temper of the public in regard to the treatment of crime and criminals is one of the most unfailing tests of the civilisation of any country.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
You have to study a great deal to know a little.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
Power should be a check on power.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
The crime against nature will never make any great progress in society unless people are prompted to it by some particular custom.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
When virtue is banished, ambition invades the minds of those who are disposed to receive it and avarice possesses the whole community.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
The spirit of commerce… renders every man willing to live on his own property…& prevents the growth of luxury.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
Men, who are rogues individually, are in the mass very honorable people.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
If I knew of something that could serve my nation but would ruin another, I would not propose it to my prince, for I am first a man and only then a Frenchman… because I am necessarily a man, and only accidentally am I French.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
The life of man is but a succession of vain hopes and groundless fears.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
Honor is unknown in despotic states.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
I have read descriptions of Paradise that would make any sensible person stop wanting to go there.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
Nature is just to all mankind, and repays them for their industry. She renders them industrious by annexing rewards in proportion to their labor.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
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.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
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