Quote

At our coming into the world we contract an immense debt to our country, which we can never discharge.

Baron de Montesquieu

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Baron de Montesquieu
Never
World
Discharge
Contract
Contracts
Immense
Debt
Coming
Country

More quotes by Baron de Montesquieu

Image
A good writer does not write as people write, but as he writes.
Baron de Montesquieu
Image
No kingdom has shed more blood than the kingdom of Christ.
Baron de Montesquieu
Image
In the state of nature... all men are born equal, but they cannot continue in this equality. Society makes them lose it, and they recover it only by the protection of the law.
Baron de Montesquieu
Image
The less men think, the more they talk.
Baron de Montesquieu
Image
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
Image
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
Image
When a government lasts a long while, it deteriorates by insensible degrees. Republics end through luxury, monarchies through poverty.
Baron de Montesquieu
Image
A nation may lose its liberties in a day and not miss them in a century.
Baron de Montesquieu
Image
Fain would I glide down a gentle river, but I am carried away by a torrent.
Baron de Montesquieu
Image
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.
Baron de Montesquieu
Image
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
Image
Honor is unknown in despotic states.
Baron de Montesquieu
Image
Lunch kills half of Paris, supper the other half.
Baron de Montesquieu
Image
Law should be like death, which spares no one.
Baron de Montesquieu
Image
The severity of the laws prevents their execution.
Baron de Montesquieu
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Those who have few affairs to attend to are great speakers. The less men think, the more they talk.
Baron de Montesquieu
Image
Laws, in their most general signification, are the necessary relations derived from the nature of things.
Baron de Montesquieu
Image
An empire founded by war has to maintain itself by war.
Baron de Montesquieu