Very good laws may be ill timed.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEUVitam Impendere Vero (I consecrate my life to truth).
More Baron de Montesquieu Quotes
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Certain kinds of foolishness are such that a greater foolishness would be better.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
The life of man is but a succession of vain hopes and groundless fears.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
An author is a fool who, not content with boring those he lives with, insists on boring future generations.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
The Ottoman Empire whose sick body was not supported by a mild and regular diet, but by a powerful treatment, which continually exhausted it.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
As men are affected in all ages by the same passions, the occasions which bring about great changes are different, but the causes are always the same.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
The sublimity of administration consists in knowing the proper degree of power that should be exerted on different occasions.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
I have never known any distress that an hour’s reading did not relieve.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
Not to be loved is a misfortune, but it is an insult to be loved no longer.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
There is no nation so powerful, as the one that obeys its laws not from principals of fear or reason, but from passion.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
…when the laws have ceased to be executed, as this can only come from the corruption of the republic, the state is already lost.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
I have always observed that to succeed in the world one should seem a fool, but be wise.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
There is something in animals beside the power of motion. They are not machines; they feel.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU -
The severity of the laws prevents their execution.
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 -
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