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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
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Lunch kills half of Paris, supper the other half.
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Certain kinds of foolishness are such that a greater foolishness would be better.
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When God endowed human beings with brains, He did not intend to guarantee them.
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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.
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You have to study a great deal to know a little.
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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.
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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.
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The less luxury there is in a republic, the more it is perfect.
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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.
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The life of man is but a succession of vain hopes and groundless fears.
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Every man who has power is impelled to abuse it.
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Slowness is frequently the cause of much greater slowness.
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Society is the union of men and not the men themselves.
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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.
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Nature is just to all mankind, and repays them for their industry. She renders them industrious by annexing rewards in proportion to their labor.
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An injustice to one is a threat made to all
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There should be weeping at a man's birth, not at his death.
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The power of divorce can be given only to those who feel the inconveniences of marriage, and who are sensible of the moment when it is for their interest to make them cease.
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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.
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