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

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Solemnity is the shield of idiots
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Each particular society begins to feel its strength, whence arises a state of war between different nations.
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There is hardly any grief that an hour's reading will not dissipate.
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When the body of the people is possessed of the supreme power, it is called a democracy.
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In bodies moved, the motion is received, increased, diminished, or lost, according to the relations of the quantity of matter and velocity each diversity is uniformity, each change is constancy.
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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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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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When God endowed human beings with brains, He did not intend to guarantee them.
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Luxury ruins republics poverty, monarchies.
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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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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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Human laws made to direct the will ought to give precepts, and not counsels.
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The love of study is in us the only lasting passion. All the others quit us in proportion as this miserable machine which holds them approaches its ruins.
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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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The severity of the laws prevents their execution.
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I have always observed that to succeed in the world one should seem a fool, but be wise.
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Wonderful maxim: not to talk of things any more after they are done.
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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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What unhappy beings men are! They constantly waver between false hopes and silly fears, and instead of relying on reason they create monsters to frighten themselves with, and phantoms which lead them astray.
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I should like to abolish funerals the time to mourn a person is at his birth, not his death.
Baron de Montesquieu