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Honor sets all the parts of the body politic in motion, and by its very action connects them thus each individual advances the public good, while he only thinks of promoting his own interest.

Baron de Montesquieu

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Baron de Montesquieu
Thinking
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Honor
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Trade is the best cure for prejudice.
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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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When the [law making] and [law enforcement] powers are united in the same person... there can be no liberty.
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Power ought to serve as a check to power.
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When the savages of Louisiana wish to have fruit, they cut the tree at the bottom and gather the fruit. That is exactly a despotic government.
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Luxury ruins republics poverty, monarchies.
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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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Wonderful maxim: not to talk of things any more after they are done.
Baron de Montesquieu
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There is no nation so powerful, as the one that obeys its laws not from principals of fear or reason, but from passion.
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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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Lunch kills half of Paris, supper the other half.
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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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The Ottoman Empire whose sick body was not supported by a mild and regular diet, but by a powerful treatment, which continually exhausted it.
Baron de Montesquieu
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Study has been for me the sovereign remedy against all the disappointments of life. I have never known any trouble that an hour's reading would not dissipate.
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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.
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Life was given to me as a favor, so I may abandon it when it is one no longer.
Baron de Montesquieu
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Politics are a smooth file, which cuts gradually, and attains its end by slow progression.
Baron de Montesquieu
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The prejudices of superstition are superior to all others, and have the strongest influence on the human mind.
Baron de Montesquieu
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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
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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.
Baron de Montesquieu