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

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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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At our coming into the world we contract an immense debt to our country, which we can never discharge.
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The Christian religion is a stranger to mere despotic power. The mildness so frequently recommended in the Gospel is incompatible with the despotic rage.
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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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It is necessary from the very nature of things that power should be a check to power.
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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
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As virtue is necessary in a republic, and honor in a monarchy, fear is what is required in a despotism. As for virtue, it is not at all necessary, and honor would be dangerous there.
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