The success of most things depends upon knowing how long it will take to succeed.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEUThere should be weeping at a man’s birth, not at his death.
More Baron de Montesquieu Quotes
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The severity of the laws prevents their execution.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
The English are busy folk; they have no time in which to be polite.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
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.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
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 -
We receive three educations, one from our parents, one from our school-masters, and one from the world. The third contradicts all that the first two teach us.
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 -
Better it is to say that the government most comfortable to nature is that which best agrees with the humor and disposition of the people in whose favor it is established.
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 -
As virtue is necessary in a republic, and honor in a monarchy, fear is what is required in a despotism. As for virtue, it is not at all necessary, and honor would be dangerous there.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
When we seek after wit, we discover only foolishness.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
Certain kinds of foolishness are such that a greater foolishness would be better.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
Virtue in a republic is the love of one’s country, that is the love of equality.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
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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The culminating point of administration is to know well how much power, great or small, we ought to use in all circumstances.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
The deterioration of every government begins with the decay of the principles on which it was founded.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU






