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You have to study a great deal to know a little.

Baron de Montesquieu

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Baron de Montesquieu
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More quotes by Baron de Montesquieu

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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.
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 less luxury there is in a republic, the more it is perfect.
Baron de Montesquieu
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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.
Baron de Montesquieu
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There should be weeping at a man's birth, not at his death.
Baron de Montesquieu
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Useless laws weaken the necessary laws.
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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At our coming into the world we contract an immense debt to our country, which we can never discharge.
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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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
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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
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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.
Baron de Montesquieu
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Slowness is frequently the cause of much greater slowness.
Baron de Montesquieu
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The public business must be carried on with a certain motion, neither too quick nor too slow.
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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There is as yet no liberty if the power of judging be not separated from legislative power and the executrix
Baron de Montesquieu
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A good writer does not write as people write, but as he writes.
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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When a government is arrived to that degree of corruption as to be incapable of reforming itself, it would not lose much by being new moulded.
Baron de Montesquieu
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Law should be like death, which spares no one.
Baron de Montesquieu