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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
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More quotes by Baron de Montesquieu

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Law should be like death, which spares no one.
Baron de Montesquieu
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Laws undertake to punish only overt acts.
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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There is a very good saying that if triangles invented a god, they would make him three-sided.
Baron de Montesquieu
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An injustice to one is a threat made to all
Baron de Montesquieu
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Solemnity is the shield of idiots
Baron de Montesquieu
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Useless laws weaken the necessary laws.
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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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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The wickedness of mankind makes it necessary for the law to suppose them better than they really are.
Baron de Montesquieu
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A nation may lose its liberties in a day and not miss them in a century.
Baron de Montesquieu
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Sometimes a man who deserves to be looked upon because he is a fool is despised only because he is a lawyer.
Baron de Montesquieu
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Human laws made to direct the will ought to give precepts, and not counsels.
Baron de Montesquieu
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Each particular society begins to feel its strength, whence arises a state of war between different nations.
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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Every man who has power is impelled to abuse it.
Baron de Montesquieu
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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.
Baron de Montesquieu
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The sublimity of administration consists in knowing the proper degree of power that should be exerted on different occasions.
Baron de Montesquieu
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Great commanders write their actions with simplicity because they receive more glory from facts than from words.
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