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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

Baron de Montesquieu

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Baron de Montesquieu
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A fondness for reading changes the inevitable dull hours of our life into exquisite hours of delight.
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Power ought to serve as a check to power.
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Life was given to me as a favor, so I may abandon it when it is one no longer.
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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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Man is a social animal formed to please in society.
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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.
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Honor is unknown in despotic states.
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You have to study a great deal to know a little.
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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.
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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Men should be bewailed at their birth, and not at their death.
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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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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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There is a very good saying that if triangles invented a god, they would make him three-sided.
Baron de Montesquieu
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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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Certain kinds of foolishness are such that a greater foolishness would be better.
Baron de Montesquieu
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Every man who has power is impelled to abuse it.
Baron de Montesquieu
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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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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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Great commanders write their actions with simplicity because they receive more glory from facts than from words.
Baron de Montesquieu