If you would be holy, instruct your children, because all the good acts they perform will be imputed to you.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEUHonor sets all the parts of the body politic in motion, and by its very action connects them; thus each individual advances the public good, while he only thinks of promoting his own interest.
More Baron de Montesquieu Quotes
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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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Wonderful maxim: not to talk of things any more after they are done.
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Very good laws may be ill timed.
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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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When we seek after wit, we discover only foolishness.
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No kingdom has shed more blood than the kingdom of Christ.
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Passion makes us feel, but never see clearly.
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The wickedness of mankind makes it necessary for the law to suppose them better than they really are.
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There is a very good saying that if triangles invented a god, they would make him three-sided.
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Thus the creation, which seems an arbitrary act, supposes laws as invariable as those of the fatality of the Atheists. It would be absurd to say that the Creator might govern the world without those rules, since without them it could not subsist.
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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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Liberty… is there only when there is no abuse of power.
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Raillery is a mode of speaking in favor of one’s wit at the expense of one’s better nature.
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Useless laws weaken the necessary laws.
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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.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU