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A nation may lose its liberties in a day and not miss them in a century.

Baron de Montesquieu

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Baron de Montesquieu
Politics
Liberties
Nations
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Freedom
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May
Nation
Lose
Loses
Century
Liberty

More quotes by Baron de Montesquieu

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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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Great commanders write their actions with simplicity because they receive more glory from facts than from words.
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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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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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An empire founded by war has to maintain itself by war.
Baron de Montesquieu
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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.
Baron de Montesquieu
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There is something in animals beside the power of motion. They are not machines they feel.
Baron de Montesquieu
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Law in general is human reason, inasmuch as it governs all the inhabitants of the earth: the political and civil laws of each nation ought to be only the particular cases in which human reason is applied.
Baron de Montesquieu
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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
Baron de Montesquieu
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If the triangles made a god, they would give him three sides.
Baron de Montesquieu
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Power ought to serve as a check to power.
Baron de Montesquieu
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Luxury ruins republics poverty, monarchies.
Baron de Montesquieu
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The incomparable stupidity of life teaches us to love our parents divine philosophy teaches us to forgive them.
Baron de Montesquieu
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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.
Baron de Montesquieu
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No kingdom has shed more blood than the kingdom of Christ.
Baron de Montesquieu
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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.
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.
Baron de Montesquieu
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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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The public business must be carried on with a certain motion, neither too quick nor too slow.
Baron de Montesquieu
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The spirit of commerce... renders every man willing to live on his own property...& prevents the growth of luxury.
Baron de Montesquieu