Baron de Montesquieu Quotes
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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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I have never known any distress that an hour's reading did not relieve.
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Vanity and pride of nations; vanity is as advantageous to a government as pride is dangerous.
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It is difficult for the united states to be all of equal power and extent.
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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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Love of the republic in a democracy, is a love of the democracy; love of the democracy is that of equality. Love of the democracy is likewise that of frugality.
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There are three species of government: republican, monarchical, and despotic.
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Never create by law what can be accomplished by morality.
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Laws, in their most general signification, are the necessary relations derived from the nature of things.
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Countries are well cultivated, not as they are fertile, but as they are free.
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When virtue is banished, ambition invades the minds of those who are disposed to receive it and avarice possesses the whole community.
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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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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.
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Brutes are deprived of the high advantages which we have; but they have some which we have not. They have not our hopes, but theyare without our fears; they are subject like us to death, but without knowing it; even most of them are more attentive than we to self-preservation, and do not make so bad a use of their passions.
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Great commanders write their actions with simplicity; because they receive more glory from facts than from words.
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No tyranny is more cruel than the one practised in the shadow of the laws and under color of justice - when, so to speak, one proceeds to drown the unfortunate on the very plank by which they had saved themselves. And since a tyrant never lacks instruments for his tyranny, Tiberius always found judges ready to condemn as many people as he might suspect.
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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.
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If triangles had a god, he would have three sides.
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The deterioration of every government begins with the decay of the principles on which it was founded.
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Europe is a state with several provinces
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As virtue is necessary in a republic, and honor in a monarchy, fear is what is required in a despotism. As for virtue, it is not at all necessary, and honor would be dangerous there.
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Mediocrity is a hand-rail.
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This punishment of death is the remedy, as it were, of a sick society.
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The majority of men are more capable of great actions than of good ones.
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The spirit of commerce is frugality, economy, moderation, labor, ponderance, tranquillity, order, and rule. So long as this spirit subsides, the riches it produces have no bad effect. The mischief is when excessive wealth destroys the spirit of commerce, then it is that the conveniences of inequality... are felt.
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Honor is unknown in despotic states.
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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.
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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.
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