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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.

Baron de Montesquieu

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Baron de Montesquieu
Instead
Monsters
Create
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Fear
Silly
Waver
Reason
Unhappy
Astray
Men
False
Frighten
Constantly
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Lead
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There is no one, says another, whom fortune does not visit once in his life but when she does not find him ready to receive her, she walks in at the door, and flies out at the window.
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When the body of the people is possessed of the supreme power, it is called a democracy.
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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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[The Pope] will make the king believe that three are only one, that the bread he eats is not bread... and a thousand other things of the same kind.
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Fain would I glide down a gentle river, but I am carried away by a torrent.
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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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When God endowed human beings with brains, He did not intend to guarantee them.
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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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A good writer does not write as people write, but as he writes.
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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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At our coming into the world we contract an immense debt to our country, which we can never discharge.
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Men, who are rogues individually, are in the mass very honorable people.
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I have always observed that to succeed in the world one should seem a fool, but be wise.
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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.
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If the triangles made a god, they would give him three sides.
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The wickedness of mankind makes it necessary for the law to suppose them better than they really are.
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Honor sets all the parts of the body politic in motion, and by its very action connects them thus each individual advances the public good, while he only thinks of promoting his own interest.
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Power ought to serve as a check to power.
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Nature is just to all mankind, and repays them for their industry. She renders them industrious by annexing rewards in proportion to their labor.
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