Baron de Montesquieu Quotes

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.

Laws, in their most general signification, are the necessary relations derived from the nature of things.

When a government is arrived to that degree of corruption as to be incapable of reforming itself, it would not lose much by being new moulded.

The deterioration of every government begins with the decay of the principles on which it was founded.

Liberty itself has appeared intolerable to those nations who have not been accustomed to enjoy it.

Nature is just to all mankind, and repays them for their industry. She renders them industrious by annexing rewards in proportion to their labor.

In the matter of dress one should always keep below one’s ability.

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.

It is unreasonable … to oblige a man not to attempt the defense of his own life.

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.