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I have ever held it as a maxim never to do that through another which it was impossible for me to execute myself

Baron de Montesquieu

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Baron de Montesquieu
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More quotes by 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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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
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Power ought to serve as a check to power.
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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An injustice to one is a threat made to all
Baron de Montesquieu
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An injustice committed against anyone is a threat to everyone.
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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The spirit of commerce... renders every man willing to live on his own property...& prevents the growth of luxury.
Baron de Montesquieu
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I have read descriptions of Paradise that would make any sensible person stop wanting to go there.
Baron de Montesquieu
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Experience constantly proves that every man who has power is impelled to abuse it he goes on till he is pulled up by some limits. Who would say it! virtue even has need of limits.
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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[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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Vanity and pride of nations vanity is as advantageous to a government as pride is dangerous.
Baron de Montesquieu
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I have never known any distress that an hour's reading did not relieve.
Baron de Montesquieu
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Human laws made to direct the will ought to give precepts, and not counsels.
Baron de Montesquieu
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The state is the association of men, and not men themselves the citizen may perish, and the man remain.
Baron de Montesquieu
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When a government lasts a long while, it deteriorates by insensible degrees. Republics end through luxury, monarchies through poverty.
Baron de Montesquieu
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I suffer from the disease of writing books and being ashamed of them when they are finished.
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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Men, who are rogues individually, are in the mass very honorable people.
Baron de Montesquieu