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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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Baron de Montesquieu
Never
Deceived
Thinking
Listen
Worth
Risk
Hate
Calumnies
Running
Calumny
True
Hating
Persons
Untrue

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The less men think, the more they talk.
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If I knew something that would serve my country but would harm mankind, I would never reveal it for I am a citizen of humanity first and by necessity, and a citizen of France second, and only by accident
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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
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As men are affected in all ages by the same passions, the occasions which bring about great changes are different, but the causes are always the same.
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To love to read is to exchange hours of ennui for hours of delight.
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The Christian religion is a stranger to mere despotic power. The mildness so frequently recommended in the Gospel is incompatible with the despotic rage.
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Men should be bewailed at their birth, and not at their death.
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Raillery is a mode of speaking in favor of one's wit at the expense of one's better nature.
Baron de Montesquieu
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Study has been for me the sovereign remedy against all the disappointments of life. I have never known any trouble that an hour's reading would not dissipate.
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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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Laws undertake to punish only overt acts.
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Human laws made to direct the will ought to give precepts, and not counsels.
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Do you think that God will punish them for not practicing a religion which he did not reveal to them?
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There is something in animals beside the power of motion. They are not machines they feel.
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When God endowed human beings with brains, He did not intend to guarantee them.
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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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Men, who are rogues individually, are in the mass very honorable people.
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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In bodies moved, the motion is received, increased, diminished, or lost, according to the relations of the quantity of matter and velocity each diversity is uniformity, each change is constancy.
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I shall be obliged to wander to the right and to the left, that I may investigate and discover the truth.
Baron de Montesquieu