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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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Baron de Montesquieu
Cuts
Gradually
Smooth
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Attains
Politics
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Ends
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More quotes by Baron de Montesquieu

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I have read descriptions of Paradise that would make any sensible person stop wanting to go there.
Baron de Montesquieu
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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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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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I have never known any distress that an hour's reading did not relieve.
Baron de Montesquieu
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The state is the association of men, and not men themselves the citizen may perish, and the man remain.
Baron de Montesquieu
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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.
Baron de Montesquieu
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Man is a social animal formed to please in society.
Baron de Montesquieu
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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.
Baron de Montesquieu
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Europe is a state with several provinces
Baron de Montesquieu
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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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Men, who are rogues individually, are in the mass very honorable people.
Baron de Montesquieu
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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.
Baron de Montesquieu
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It is necessary from the very nature of things that power should be a check to power.
Baron de Montesquieu
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Laws, in their most general signification, are the necessary relations derived from the nature of things.
Baron de Montesquieu
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In the matter of dress one should always keep below one's ability.
Baron de Montesquieu
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The severity of the laws prevents their execution.
Baron de Montesquieu
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As men are affected in all ages by the same passions, the occasions which bring about great changes are different, but the causes are always the same.
Baron de Montesquieu
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I never listen to calumnies, because if they are untrue I run the risk of being deceived, and if they be true, of hating persons not worth thinking about.
Baron de Montesquieu
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Slowness is frequently the cause of much greater slowness.
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.
Baron de Montesquieu