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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
Counsels
Giving
Precepts
Made
Laws
Direct
Ought

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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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At our coming into the world we contract an immense debt to our country, which we can never discharge.
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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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That anyone who possesses power has a tendency to abuse it is an eternal truth. They tend to go as far as the barriers will allow.
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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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Every man who has power is impelled to abuse it.
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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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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.
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It is always the adventurous who accomplish great things.
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It is necessary from the very nature of things that power should be a check to power.
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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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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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What cowardice it is to be dismayed by the happiness of others and devastated by there good fortune.
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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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...when the laws have ceased to be executed, as this can only come from the corruption of the republic, the state is already lost.
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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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Knowledge humanizes mankind, and reason inclines to mildness but prejudices eradicate every tender disposition.
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Law should be like death, which spares no one.
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Man is a social animal formed to please in society.
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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