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Vanity and pride of nations vanity is as advantageous to a government as pride is dangerous.

Baron de Montesquieu

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Baron de Montesquieu
Government
Advantageous
Vanity
Pride
Dangerous
Nations

More quotes by Baron de Montesquieu

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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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The public business must be carried on with a certain motion, neither too quick nor too slow.
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A good writer does not write as people write, but as he writes.
Baron de Montesquieu
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It is necessary from the very nature of things that power should be a check to power.
Baron de Montesquieu
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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.
Baron de Montesquieu
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The incomparable stupidity of life teaches us to love our parents divine philosophy teaches us to forgive them.
Baron de Montesquieu
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I have never known any distress that an hour's reading did not relieve.
Baron de Montesquieu
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Law should be like death, which spares no one.
Baron de Montesquieu
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It is always the adventurous who accomplish great things.
Baron de Montesquieu
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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.
Baron de Montesquieu
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To become truly great, one has to stand with people, not above them.
Baron de Montesquieu
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An injustice committed against anyone is a threat to everyone.
Baron de Montesquieu
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Better it is to say that the government most comfortable to nature is that which best agrees with the humor and disposition of the people in whose favor it is established.
Baron de Montesquieu
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If I knew something that would serve my country but would harm mankind, I would never reveal it for I am a citizen of humanity first and by necessity, and a citizen of France second, and only by accident
Baron de Montesquieu
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Laws undertake to punish only overt acts.
Baron de Montesquieu
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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.
Baron de Montesquieu
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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
Baron de Montesquieu
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There is still another inconvenieney in conquests made by democracies their government is ever odious to the conquered states. It is apparently monarchical, but in reality it is more oppressive than monarchy, as the experience of all ages and countries evinces.
Baron de Montesquieu
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When one wants to change manners and customs, one should not do so by changing the laws.
Baron de Montesquieu
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There is a very good saying that if triangles invented a god, they would make him three-sided.
Baron de Montesquieu