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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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Baron de Montesquieu
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More quotes by Baron de Montesquieu

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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.
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Certain kinds of foolishness are such that a greater foolishness would be better.
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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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There is hardly any grief that an hour's reading will not dissipate.
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Men, who are rogues individually, are in the mass very honorable people.
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There is something in animals beside the power of motion. They are not machines they feel.
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If the triangles made a god, they would give him three sides.
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When the [law making] and [law enforcement] powers are united in the same person... there can be no liberty.
Baron de Montesquieu
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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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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.
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That anyone who possesses power has a tendency to abuse it is an eternal truth. They tend to go as far as the barriers will allow.
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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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Vitam Impendere Vero (I consecrate my life to truth).
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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
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There is as yet no liberty if the power of judging be not separated from legislative power and the executrix
Baron de Montesquieu
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Fain would I glide down a gentle river, but I am carried away by a torrent.
Baron de Montesquieu
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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.
Baron de Montesquieu
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Republics end through luxury monarchies through poverty.
Baron de Montesquieu
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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
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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