The pagan religion, which prohibited only some of the grosser crimes, and which stopped the hand but meddled not with the heart, might have crimes that were inexplicable.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEUI shall be obliged to wander to the right and to the left, that I may investigate and discover the truth.
More Baron de Montesquieu Quotes
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You have to study a great deal to know a little.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
For a country, everything will be lost when the jobs of an economist and a banker become highly respected professions.
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 -
There is hardly any grief that an hour’s reading will not dissipate.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
Wherever I find envy I take a pleasure in provoking it: I always praise before an envious man those who make him grow pale.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
Sometimes a man who deserves to be looked upon because he is a fool is despised only because he is a lawyer.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
At our coming into the world we contract an immense debt to our country, which we can never discharge.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
They who assert that a blind fatality produced the various effects we behold in this world talk very absurdly; for can anything be more unreasonable than to pretend that a blind fatality could be productive of intelligent beings.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
It is necessary from the very nature of things that power should be a check to power.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
Happy the people whose annals are tiresome.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
The prejudices of superstition are superior to all others, and have the strongest influence on the human mind.
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.
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It is rare to find learned men who are clean, do not stink and have a sense of humour.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
Raillery is a mode of speaking in favor of one’s wit at the expense of one’s better nature.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
It is always the adventurers who do great things, not the sovereigns of great empires.
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The tyranny of a prince in an oligarchy is not so dangerous to the public welfare as the apathy of a citizen in a democracy.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
The reason the Romans built their great paved highways was because they had such inconvenient footwear.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
Solemnity is the shield of idiots
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
When we seek after wit, we discover only foolishness.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
As soon as man enters into a state of society he loses the sense of his weakness; equality ceases, and then commences the state of war.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
The law of nations is naturally founded on this principle, that different nations ought in time of peace to do one another all the good they can, and in time of war as little injury as possible, without prejudicing their real interests.
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 -
Laws undertake to punish only overt acts.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
The English are busy; they don’t have time to be polite.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
The state of slavery is in its own nature bad.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
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