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Power ought to serve as a check to power.

Baron de Montesquieu

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Baron de Montesquieu
Check
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More quotes by Baron de Montesquieu

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The less men think, the more they talk.
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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Those who have few affairs to attend to are great speakers. The less men think, the more they talk.
Baron de Montesquieu
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Honor is unknown in despotic states.
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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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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Lunch kills half of Paris, supper the other half.
Baron de Montesquieu
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What cowardice it is to be dismayed by the happiness of others and devastated by there good fortune.
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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Fain would I glide down a gentle river, but I am carried away by a torrent.
Baron de Montesquieu
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I never listen to calumnies, because if they are untrue I run the risk of being deceived, and if they be true, of hating persons not worth thinking about.
Baron de Montesquieu
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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.
Baron de Montesquieu
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Europe is a state with several provinces
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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In the state of nature... all men are born equal, but they cannot continue in this equality. Society makes them lose it, and they recover it only by the protection of the law.
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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When one wants to change manners and customs, one should not do so by changing the laws.
Baron de Montesquieu
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Do you think that God will punish them for not practicing a religion which he did not reveal to them?
Baron de Montesquieu
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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.
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