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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
May
Nation
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Loses
Century
Liberty
Politics
Liberties
Nations
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More quotes by 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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When a government lasts a long while, it deteriorates by insensible degrees. Republics end through luxury, monarchies through poverty.
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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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The public business must be carried on with a certain motion, neither too quick nor too slow.
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Slowness is frequently the cause of much greater slowness.
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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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An empire founded by war has to maintain itself by war.
Baron de Montesquieu
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Mediocrity is a hand-rail.
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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The sublimity of administration consists in knowing the proper degree of power that should be exerted on different occasions.
Baron de Montesquieu
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Sometimes a man who deserves to be looked upon because he is a fool is despised only because he is a lawyer.
Baron de Montesquieu
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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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The prejudices of superstition are superior to all others, and have the strongest influence on the human mind.
Baron de Montesquieu
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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.
Baron de Montesquieu
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Lunch kills half of Paris, supper the other half.
Baron de Montesquieu
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Life was given to me as a favor, so I may abandon it when it is one no longer.
Baron de Montesquieu
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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.
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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The state is the association of men, and not men themselves the citizen may perish, and the man remain.
Baron de Montesquieu
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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.
Baron de Montesquieu