Baron de Montesquieu quotes:

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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.

  • Religious wars are not caused by the fact that there is more than one religion, but by the spirit of intolerance... the spread of which can only be regarded as the total eclipse of human reason.

  • The Ottoman Empire whose sick body was not supported by a mild and regular diet, but by a powerful treatment, which continually exhausted it.

  • When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person, or in the same body of magistrates, there can be no liberty; because apprehensions may arise, lest the same monarch or senate should enact tyrannical laws, to execute them in a tyrannical manner.

  • 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.

  • The reason the Romans built their great paved highways was because they had such inconvenient footwear.

  • It is always the adventurers who do great things, not the sovereigns of great empires.

  • Thus the creation, which seems an arbitrary act, supposes laws as invariable as those of the fatality of the Atheists. It would be absurd to say that the Creator might govern the world without those rules, since without them it could not subsist.

  • I never listen to calumnies, because if they are untrue I run the risk of being deceived, and if they be true, of hating persons not worth thinking about.

  • Power ought to serve as a check to power.

  • It is not the young people that degenerate; they are not spoiled till those of mature age are already sunk into corruption.

  • An author is a fool who, not content with boring those he lives with, insists on boring future generations.

  • Luxury ruins republics; poverty, monarchies.

  • I have never known any distress that an hour's reading did not relieve.

  • Although born in a prosperous realm, we did not believe that its boundaries should limit our knowledge, and that the lore of the East should alone enlighten us.

  • Christianity stamped its character on jurisprudence; for empire has ever a connection with the priesthood.

  • The Christian religion is a stranger to mere despotic power. The mildness so frequently recommended in the Gospel is incompatible with the despotic rage.

  • We ought to be very cautious and circumspect in the prosecution of magic and heresy. The attempt to put down these two crimes may be extremely perilous to liberty.

  • The incomparable stupidity of life teaches us to love our parents; divine philosophy teaches us to forgive them.

  • Life was given to me as a favor, so I may abandon it when it is one no longer.

  • What orators lack in depth they make up for in length.

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

  • To love to read is to exchange hours of ennui for hours of delight.

  • The severity of the laws prevents their execution.

  • What unhappy beings men are! They constantly waver between false hopes and silly fears, and instead of relying on reason they create monsters to frighten themselves with, and phantoms which lead them astray.

  • Friendship is an arrangement by which we undertake to exchange small favors for big ones.

  • Love of reading enables a man to exchange the weary hours, which come to every one, for hours of delight.

  • Knowledge humanizes mankind, and reason inclines to mildness; but prejudices eradicate every tender disposition.

  • I like peasants-they are not sophisticated enough to reason speciously.

  • I acknowledge that history is full of religious wars: but we must distinguish; it is not the multiplicity of religions which has produced wars; it is the intolerant spirit animating that which believed itself in the ascendant.

  • Republics end through luxury; monarchies through poverty.

  • Men, who are rogues individually, are in the mass very honorable people.

  • False happiness renders men stern and proud, and that happiness is never communicated. True happiness renders them kind and sensible, and that happiness is always shared.

  • There is no crueler tyranny than that which is perpetuated under the shield of law and in the name of justice.

  • Solemnity is the shield of idiots

  • Lunch kills half of Paris, supper the other half.

  • If the triangles made a god, they would give him three sides.

  • There is a very good saying that if triangles invented a god, they would make him three-sided.

  • Useless laws weaken the necessary laws.

  • Vanity and pride of nations; vanity is as advantageous to a government as pride is dangerous.

  • It is necessary from the very nature of things that power should be a check to power.

  • Democracy is corrupted not only when the spirit of equality is corrupted, but likewise when they fall into a spirit of extreme equality.

  • 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.

  • In the state of nature... all men are born equal, but they cannot continue in this equality. Society makes them lose it, and they recover it only by the protection of the law.

  • Every man who has power is impelled to abuse it.

  • Democracy has two excesses to avoid: the spirit of inequality, which leads to an aristocracy, or to the government of a single individual; and the spirit of extreme equality, which conducts it to despotism, as the despotism of a single individual finishes by conquest.

  • Never create by law what can be accomplished by morality.

  • Liberty... is there only when there is no abuse of power.

  • I have ever held it as a maxim never to do that through another which it was impossible for me to execute myself

  • If I knew something that would serve my country but would harm mankind, I would never reveal it; for I am a citizen of humanity first and by necessity, and a citizen of France second, and only by accident

  • A nation may lose its liberties in a day and not miss them in a century.

  • I shall be obliged to wander to the right and to the left, that I may investigate and discover the truth.

  • 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.

  • Political liberty in a citizen is that tranquillity of spirit which comes from the opinion each one has of his security, and in order for him to have this liberty the government must be such that one citizen cannot fear another citizen.

  • For a country, everything will be lost when the jobs of an economist and a banker become highly respected professions.

  • It is clear that in a monarchy, where he who commands the exceution of the laws generally thinks himself above them, there is lessneed of virtue than in a popular government, where the person entrusted with the execution of the laws is sensible of his being subject to their direction.

  • There is no nation so powerful, as the one that obeys its laws not from principals of fear or reason, but from passion.

  • If one only wished to be happy, this could be easily accomplished; but we wish to be happier that other people, and this is always difficult, for we believe others to be happier than they are. you are comparing your lot with an ideal which is of course better and therefore you feel worse

  • ...when the laws have ceased to be executed, as this can only come from the corruption of the republic, the state is already lost.

  • When a government lasts a long while, it deteriorates by insensible degrees. Republics end through luxury, monarchies through poverty.

  • The false notion of miracles comes of our vanity, which makes us believe we are important enough for the Supreme Being to upset nature on our behalf.

  • Virtue in a republic is the love of one's country, that is the love of equality.

  • A prince who loves and fears religion is a lion who stoops to the hand that strokes or to the voice that appeases him. He who fears and hates religion is like the savage beast that growls and bites the chain, which prevents his flying on the passenger. He who has no religion at all is that terrible animal who perceives his liberty only when he tears in pieces, and when he devours.

  • Do you think that God will punish them for not practicing a religion which he did not reveal to them?

  • There is only one thing that can form a bond between men, and that is gratitude... we cannot give someone else greater power over us than we have ourselves.

  • 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.

  • Talent is a gift which God has given us secretly, and which we reveal without perceiving it.

  • The less men think, the more they talk.

  • An injustice committed against anyone is a threat to everyone.

  • If I knew of something that could serve my nation but would ruin another, I would not propose it to my prince, for I am first a man and only then a Frenchman...because I am necessarily a man, and only accidentally am I French.

  • It is always the adventurous who accomplish great things.

  • If we only wanted to be happy, it would be easy; but we want to be happier than other people, and that is almost always difficult, since we think them happier than they are.

  • The less luxury there is in a republic, the more it is perfect.

  • Laws, in their most general signification, are the necessary relations arising from the nature of things. In this sense all beings have their laws: the Deity His laws, the material world its laws, the intelligences superior to man their laws, the beasts their laws, man his laws.

  • There are three species of government: republican, monarchical, and despotic.

  • The prejudices of superstition are superior to all others, and have the strongest influence on the human mind.

  • A really intelligent man feels what other men only know.

  • A love of the republic in a democracy is a love of the democracy, as the latter is that of equality. A love of the democracy is likewise that of frugality. Since every individual ought here to enjoy the same happiness, and the same advantages, they should consequently taste the same pleasures and form the same hopes, which cannot be expected but from a general frugality.

  • There are countries where a man is worth nothing; there are others where he is worth less than nothing.

  • Countries are well cultivated, not as they are fertile, but as they are free.

  • Law should be like death, which spares no one.

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

  • An empire founded by war has to maintain itself by war.

  • The harshest tyranny is that which acts under the protection of legality and the banner of justice.

  • It is rare to find learned men who are clean, do not stink and have a sense of humour.

  • The sublimity of administration consists in knowing the proper degree of power that should be exerted on different occasions.

  • The state is the association of men, and not men themselves; the citizen may perish, and the man remain.

  • Vitam Impendere Vero (I consecrate my life to truth).

  • The state of slavery is in its own nature bad.

  • Passion makes us feel, but never see clearly.

  • 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.

  • Slavery, properly so called, is the establishment of a right which gives to one man such a power over another as renders him absolute master of his life and fortune.

  • Honor is unknown in despotic states.

  • 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.

  • I should like to abolish funerals; the time to mourn a person is at his birth, not his death.

  • In vain do we seek tranquility in the desert; temptations are always with us; our passions, represented by the demons, never let us alone: those monsters created by the heart, those illusions produced by the mind, those vain specters that are our errors and our lies always appear before us to seduce us; they attack us even in our fasting or our mortifications, in other words, in our very strength.

  • Study has been for me the sovereign remedy against all the disappointments of life. I have never known any trouble that an hour's reading would not dissipate.

  • Not to be loved is a misfortune, but it is an insult to be loved no longer.

  • There is as yet no liberty if the power of judging be not separated from legislative power and the executrix

  • 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.

  • The alms given to a naked man in the street do not fulfil the obligations of the state, which owes to every citizen a certain subsistence, a proper nourishment, convenient clothing, and a kind of life not incompatible with health.

  • Laws undertake to punish only overt acts.

  • The power of divorce can be given only to those who feel the inconveniences of marriage, and who are sensible of the moment when it is for their interest to make them cease.

  • Wonderful maxim: not to talk of things any more after they are done.

  • 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.

  • When the savages of Louisiana wish to have fruit, they cut the tree at the bottom and gather the fruit. That is exactly a despotic government.

  • When one wants to change manners and customs, one should not do so by changing the laws.

  • The history of commerce is that of the communication of the people.

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

  • There have never been so many civil wars as in the Kingdom of Christ.

  • Coffee renders many foolish people temporarily capable of wise actions

  • In the infancy of societies, the chiefs of state shape its institutions; later the institutions shape the chiefs of state.

  • The success of most things depends upon knowing how long it will take to succeed.

  • Christians are beginning to lose the spirit of intolerance which animated them: experience has shown the error of the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, and of the persecution of those Christians in France whose belief differed a little from that of the king. They have realized that zeal for the advancement of religion is different from a due attachment to it; and that in order to love it and fulfil its behests, it is not necessary to hate and persecute those who are opposed to it.

  • They who love to inform themselves, are never idle. Though I have no business of consequence to take care of, I am nevertheless continually employed. I spend my life in examining things: I write down in the evening whatever I have remarked, what I have seen, and what I have heard in the day: every thing engages my attention, and every thing excites my wonder: I am like an infant, whose organs, as yet tender, are strongly affected by the slightest objects.

  • Wherever I find envy I take a pleasure in provoking it: I always praise before an envious man those who make him grow pale.

  • If you would be holy, instruct your children, because all the good acts they perform will be imputed to you.

  • Virtue has needs of limits.

  • The love of democracy is that of equality.

  • Mediocrity is a hand-rail.

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