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Power ought to serve as a check to power.
Baron de Montesquieu
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Baron de Montesquieu
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More quotes by Baron de Montesquieu
Human laws made to direct the will ought to give precepts, and not counsels.
Baron de Montesquieu
Mediocrity is a hand-rail.
Baron de Montesquieu
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
If the triangles made a god, they would give him three sides.
Baron de Montesquieu
We must have constantly present in our minds the difference between independence and liberty. Liberty is a right of doing whatever the laws permit, and if a citizen could do what they forbid he would no longer be possessed of liberty.
Baron de Montesquieu
Do you think that God will punish them for not practicing a religion which he did not reveal to them?
Baron de Montesquieu
What cowardice it is to be dismayed by the happiness of others and devastated by there good fortune.
Baron de Montesquieu
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.
Baron de Montesquieu
The prejudices of superstition are superior to all others, and have the strongest influence on the human mind.
Baron de Montesquieu
Men in excess of happiness or misery are equally inclined to severity. Witness conquerors and monks! It is mediocrity alone, and a mixture of prosperous and adverse fortune that inspire us with lenity and pity.
Baron de Montesquieu
What unhappy beings men are! They constantly waver between false hopes and silly fears, and instead of relying on reason they create monsters to frighten themselves with, and phantoms which lead them astray.
Baron de Montesquieu
An injustice committed against anyone is a threat to everyone.
Baron de Montesquieu
Fain would I glide down a gentle river, but I am carried away by a torrent.
Baron de Montesquieu
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
I suffer from the disease of writing books and being ashamed of them when they are finished.
Baron de Montesquieu
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.
Baron de Montesquieu
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.
Baron de Montesquieu
Republics come to an end by luxurious habits monarchies by poverty.
Baron de Montesquieu
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
The less luxury there is in a republic, the more it is perfect.
Baron de Montesquieu