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Mediocrity is a hand-rail.

Baron de Montesquieu

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Baron de Montesquieu
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Mediocrity
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Solemnity is the shield of idiots
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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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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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As virtue is necessary in a republic, and honor in a monarchy, fear is what is required in a despotism. As for virtue, it is not at all necessary, and honor would be dangerous there.
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The life of man is but a succession of vain hopes and groundless fears.
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When God endowed human beings with brains, He did not intend to guarantee them.
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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.
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There is a very good saying that if triangles invented a god, they would make him three-sided.
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An empire founded by war has to maintain itself by war.
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Men in excess of happiness or misery are equally inclined to severity. Witness conquerors and monks! It is mediocrity alone, and a mixture of prosperous and adverse fortune that inspire us with lenity and pity.
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Better it is to say that the government most comfortable to nature is that which best agrees with the humor and disposition of the people in whose favor it is established.
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Do you think that God will punish them for not practicing a religion which he did not reveal to them?
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There is something in animals beside the power of motion. They are not machines they feel.
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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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Law should be like death, which spares no one.
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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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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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The wickedness of mankind makes it necessary for the law to suppose them better than they really are.
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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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A rational army would run away.
Baron de Montesquieu