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Laws undertake to punish only overt acts.

Baron de Montesquieu

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Baron de Montesquieu
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Law

More quotes by Baron de Montesquieu

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Each particular society begins to feel its strength, whence arises a state of war between different nations.
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The prejudices of superstition are superior to all others, and have the strongest influence on the human mind.
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An author is a fool who, not content with boring those he lives with, insists on boring future generations.
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Society is the union of men and not the men themselves.
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There is as yet no liberty if the power of judging be not separated from legislative power and the executrix
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The state is the association of men, and not men themselves the citizen may perish, and the man remain.
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The less men think, the more they talk.
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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.
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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.
Baron de Montesquieu
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What cowardice it is to be dismayed by the happiness of others and devastated by there good fortune.
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A nation may lose its liberties in a day and not miss them in a century.
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There is no nation so powerful, as the one that obeys its laws not from principals of fear or reason, but from passion.
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There is something in animals beside the power of motion. They are not machines they feel.
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There should be weeping at a man's birth, not at his death.
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Raillery is a mode of speaking in favor of one's wit at the expense of one's better nature.
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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.
Baron de Montesquieu
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Mediocrity is a hand-rail.
Baron de Montesquieu
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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
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With truths of a certain kind, it is not enough to make them appear convincing: one must also make them felt. Of such kind are moral truths.
Baron de Montesquieu
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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.
Baron de Montesquieu