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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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Baron de Montesquieu
Mankind
Law
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Better
Really
Wickedness
Suppose
Necessary

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If the triangles made a god, they would give him three sides.
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Luxury ruins republics poverty, monarchies.
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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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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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When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person, or in the same body of magistrates, there can be no liberty because apprehensions may arise, lest the same monarch or senate should enact tyrannical laws, to execute them in a tyrannical manner.
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Certain kinds of foolishness are such that a greater foolishness would be better.
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It is necessary from the very nature of things that power should be a check to power.
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You have to study a great deal to know a little.
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I have read descriptions of Paradise that would make any sensible person stop wanting to go there.
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I suffer from the disease of writing books and being ashamed of them when they are finished.
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Vitam Impendere Vero (I consecrate my life to truth).
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Law should be like death, which spares no one.
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When one wants to change manners and customs, one should not do so by changing the laws.
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Virtue in a republic is the love of one's country, that is the love of equality.
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When God endowed human beings with brains, He did not intend to guarantee them.
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Every man who has power is impelled to abuse it.
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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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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.
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Slowness is frequently the cause of much greater slowness.
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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