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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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Baron de Montesquieu
Virtue
Fear
Despotism
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Monarchy
Would
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Republic
Necessary
Honor
Dangerous

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Fain would I glide down a gentle river, but I am carried away by a torrent.
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Man is a social animal formed to please in society.
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There is something in animals beside the power of motion. They are not machines they feel.
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Republics end through luxury monarchies through poverty.
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A good writer does not write as people write, but as he writes.
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There is hardly any grief that an hour's reading will not dissipate.
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The less men think, the more they talk.
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If the triangles made a god, they would give him three sides.
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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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In bodies moved, the motion is received, increased, diminished, or lost, according to the relations of the quantity of matter and velocity each diversity is uniformity, each change is constancy.
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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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Great commanders write their actions with simplicity because they receive more glory from facts than from words.
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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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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
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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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...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 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.
Baron de Montesquieu
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We ought to be very cautious and circumspect in the prosecution of magic and heresy. The attempt to put down these two crimes may be extremely perilous to liberty.
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