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Mediocrity is a hand-rail.

Baron de Montesquieu

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Baron de Montesquieu
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Rail
Mediocrity
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More quotes by Baron de Montesquieu

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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.
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I have ever held it as a maxim never to do that through another which it was impossible for me to execute myself
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Man, as a physical being, is like other bodies governed by invariable laws.
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The life of man is but a succession of vain hopes and groundless fears.
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Man is a social animal formed to please in society.
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I have never known any distress that an hour's reading did not relieve.
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When a government lasts a long while, it deteriorates by insensible degrees. Republics end through luxury, monarchies through poverty.
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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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Power ought to serve as a check to power.
Baron de Montesquieu
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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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Honor is unknown in despotic states.
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Laws, in their most general signification, are the necessary relations derived from the nature of things.
Baron de Montesquieu
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When one wants to change manners and customs, one should not do so by changing the laws.
Baron de Montesquieu
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Society is the union of men and not the men themselves.
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When a government is arrived to that degree of corruption as to be incapable of reforming itself, it would not lose much by being new moulded.
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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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There is hardly any grief that an hour's reading will not dissipate.
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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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If the triangles made a god, they would give him three sides.
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.
Baron de Montesquieu