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

Baron de Montesquieu

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Baron de Montesquieu
Corruption
Laws
Already
Law
State
Lost
Executed
States
Ceased
Come
Republic

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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.
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The sublimity of administration consists in knowing the proper degree of power that should be exerted on different occasions.
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Slowness is frequently the cause of much greater slowness.
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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.
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It is necessary from the very nature of things that power should be a check to power.
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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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When one wants to change manners and customs, one should not do so by changing the laws.
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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.
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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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As men are affected in all ages by the same passions, the occasions which bring about great changes are different, but the causes are always the same.
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I have read descriptions of Paradise that would make any sensible person stop wanting to go there.
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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.
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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.
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The life of man is but a succession of vain hopes and groundless fears.
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The Ottoman Empire whose sick body was not supported by a mild and regular diet, but by a powerful treatment, which continually exhausted it.
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The love of study is in us the only lasting passion. All the others quit us in proportion as this miserable machine which holds them approaches its ruins.
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The severity of the laws prevents their execution.
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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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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.
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The public business must be carried on with a certain motion, neither too quick nor too slow.
Baron de Montesquieu