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Laws undertake to punish only overt acts.

Baron de Montesquieu

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Baron de Montesquieu
Overt
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More quotes by Baron de Montesquieu

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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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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.
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Slowness is frequently the cause of much greater slowness.
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The severity of the laws prevents their execution.
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The incomparable stupidity of life teaches us to love our parents divine philosophy teaches us to forgive them.
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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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Life was given to me as a favor, so I may abandon it when it is one no longer.
Baron de Montesquieu
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Europe is a state with several provinces
Baron de Montesquieu
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There are countries where a man is worth nothing there are others where he is worth less than nothing.
Baron de Montesquieu
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I have never known any distress that an hour's reading did not relieve.
Baron de Montesquieu
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An injustice to one is a threat made to all
Baron de Montesquieu
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The Christian religion is a stranger to mere despotic power. The mildness so frequently recommended in the Gospel is incompatible with the despotic rage.
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Virtue in a republic is the love of one's country, that is the love of equality.
Baron de Montesquieu
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Do you think that God will punish them for not practicing a religion which he did not reveal to them?
Baron de Montesquieu
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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.
Baron de Montesquieu
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There is as yet no liberty if the power of judging be not separated from legislative power and the executrix
Baron de Montesquieu
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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.
Baron de Montesquieu
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The spirit of commerce... renders every man willing to live on his own property...& prevents the growth of luxury.
Baron de Montesquieu
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No kingdom has shed more blood than the kingdom of Christ.
Baron de Montesquieu
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We must have constantly present in our minds the difference between independence and liberty. Liberty is a right of doing whatever the laws permit, and if a citizen could do what they forbid he would no longer be possessed of liberty.
Baron de Montesquieu