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When the body of the people is possessed of the supreme power, it is called a democracy.

Baron de Montesquieu

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Baron de Montesquieu
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The false notion of miracles comes of our vanity, which makes us believe we are important enough for the Supreme Being to upset nature on our behalf.
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Political liberty is to be found only in moderate governments.
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Men, who are rogues individually, are in the mass very honorable people.
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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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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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Raillery is a mode of speaking in favor of one's wit at the expense of one's better nature.
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The incomparable stupidity of life teaches us to love our parents divine philosophy teaches us to forgive them.
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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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Society is the union of men and not the men themselves.
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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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Democracy has two excesses to avoid: the spirit of inequality, which leads to an aristocracy, or to the government of a single individual and the spirit of extreme equality, which conducts it to despotism, as the despotism of a single individual finishes by conquest.
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In republican governments, men are all equal equal they are also in despotic governments: in the former, because they are everything in the latter, because they are nothing.
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There is hardly any grief that an hour's reading will not dissipate.
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An empire founded by war has to maintain itself by war.
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That anyone who possesses power has a tendency to abuse it is an eternal truth. They tend to go as far as the barriers will allow.
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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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With truths of a certain kind, it is not enough to make them appear convincing: one must also make them felt. Of such kind are moral truths.
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The less luxury there is in a republic, the more it is perfect.
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Political liberty in a citizen is that tranquillity of spirit which comes from the opinion each one has of his security, and in order for him to have this liberty the government must be such that one citizen cannot fear another citizen.
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