Luxury ruins republics; poverty, monarchies.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEUThe public business must be carried on with a certain motion, neither too quick nor too slow.
More Baron de Montesquieu Quotes
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Politics are a smooth file, which cuts gradually, and attains its end by slow progression.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
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 -
The coffee is prepared in such a way that it makes those who drink it witty: at least there is not a single soul who, on quitting the house, does not believe himself four times wittier that when he entered it.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
The history of commerce is that of the communication of the people.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
There is no one, says another, whom fortune does not visit once in his life; but when she does not find him ready to receive her, she walks in at the door, and flies out at the window.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
Solemnity is the shield of idiots
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
Power should be a check on power.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
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.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
A man who writes well writes not as others write, but as he himself writes; it is often in speaking badly that he speaks well.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
In every government there are three sorts of power: the legislative; the executive in respect to things dependent on the law of nations; and the executive in regard to matters that depend on the civil law.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
Laws, in their most general signification, are the necessary relations derived from the nature of things.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
The less men think, the more they talk.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
In bodies moved, the motion is received, increased, diminished, or lost, according to the relations of the quantity of matter and velocity; each diversity is uniformity, each change is constancy.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
Society is the union of men and not the men themselves.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
In a republic there is no coercive force as in other governments, the laws must therefore endeavor to supply this defect.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU