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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.

Baron de Montesquieu

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Baron de Montesquieu
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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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Success in the majority of circumstances depends on knowing how long it takes to succeed.
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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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It is clear that in a monarchy, where he who commands the exceution of the laws generally thinks himself above them, there is lessneed of virtue than in a popular government, where the person entrusted with the execution of the laws is sensible of his being subject to their direction.
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Luxury ruins republics poverty, monarchies.
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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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Vitam Impendere Vero (I consecrate my life to truth).
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An empire founded by war has to maintain itself by war.
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When the [law making] and [law enforcement] powers are united in the same person... there can be no liberty.
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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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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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In republican governments, men are all equal equal they are also in despotic governments: in the former, because they are everything in the latter, because they are nothing.
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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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A good writer does not write as people write, but as he writes.
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Great commanders write their actions with simplicity because they receive more glory from facts than from words.
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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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Political liberty in a citizen is that tranquillity of spirit which comes from the opinion each one has of his security, and in order for him to have this liberty the government must be such that one citizen cannot fear another citizen.
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When God endowed human beings with brains, He did not intend to guarantee them.
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