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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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Baron de Montesquieu
Law
Give
Human
Humans
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Precepts
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Laws
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Ought

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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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The false notion of miracles comes of our vanity, which makes us believe we are important enough for the Supreme Being to upset nature on our behalf.
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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.
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The prejudices of superstition are superior to all others, and have the strongest influence on the human mind.
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There are countries where a man is worth nothing there are others where he is worth less than nothing.
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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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An author is a fool who, not content with boring those he lives with, insists on boring future generations.
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Lunch kills half of Paris, supper the other half.
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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.
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Raillery is a mode of speaking in favor of one's wit at the expense of one's better nature.
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Every man who has power is impelled to abuse it.
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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.
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Society is the union of men and not the men themselves.
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Vanity and pride of nations vanity is as advantageous to a government as pride is dangerous.
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The sublimity of administration consists in knowing the proper degree of power that should be exerted on different occasions.
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Those who have few affairs to attend to are great speakers. The less men think, the more they talk.
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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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There is something in animals beside the power of motion. They are not machines they feel.
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The severity of the laws prevents their execution.
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I suffer from the disease of writing books and being ashamed of them when they are finished.
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