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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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Baron de Montesquieu
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A nation may lose its liberties in a day and not miss them in a century.
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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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Vanity and pride of nations vanity is as advantageous to a government as pride is dangerous.
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Certain kinds of foolishness are such that a greater foolishness would be better.
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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 love of study is in us the only lasting passion. All the others quit us in proportion as this miserable machine which holds them approaches its ruins.
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It is always the adventurous who accomplish great things.
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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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Those who have few affairs to attend to are great speakers. The less men think, the more they talk.
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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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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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Law should be like death, which spares no one.
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Slowness is frequently the cause of much greater slowness.
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