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When a government lasts a long while, it deteriorates by insensible degrees. Republics end through luxury, monarchies through poverty.

Baron de Montesquieu

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Baron de Montesquieu
Republic
Luxury
Degrees
Poverty
Deteriorates
Lasts
Monarchies
Ends
Republics
Government
Insensible
Long
Monarchy

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The less luxury there is in a republic, the more it is perfect.
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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 necessary from the very nature of things that power should be a check to power.
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Slowness is frequently the cause of much greater slowness.
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Power ought to serve as a check to power.
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Men, who are rogues individually, are in the mass very honorable people.
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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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The incomparable stupidity of life teaches us to love our parents divine philosophy teaches us to forgive them.
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There is as yet no liberty if the power of judging be not separated from legislative power and the executrix
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It is always the adventurous who accomplish great things.
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Law should be like death, which spares no one.
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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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Mediocrity is a hand-rail.
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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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There is no one, says another, whom fortune does not visit once in his life but when she does not find him ready to receive her, she walks in at the door, and flies out at the window.
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The Ottoman Empire whose sick body was not supported by a mild and regular diet, but by a powerful treatment, which continually exhausted it.
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No kingdom has shed more blood than the kingdom of Christ.
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I have never known any distress that an hour's reading did not relieve.
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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.
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Wonderful maxim: not to talk of things any more after they are done.
Baron de Montesquieu