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I am further of opinion that it would be better for us to have [no laws] at all than to have them in so prodigious numbers as we have.

Michel de Montaigne

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Michel de Montaigne
Age: 59 †
Born: 1533
Born: February 28
Died: 1592
Died: September 13
Autobiographer
Essayist
French Moralist
Jurist
Philosopher
Poet Lawyer
Politician
Translator
Writer
Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
Miquèu Eiquèm de Montanha
Miqueu Eiquem de Montanha
Numbers
Opinion
Justice
Law
Better
Would
Prodigious
Laws

More quotes by Michel de Montaigne

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Every one rushes elsewhere and into the future, because no one wants to face one's own inner self.
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Oh senseless man, who cannot possibly make a worm or a flea and yet will create Gods by the dozen!
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Who does not in some sort live to others, does not live much to himself.
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We have power over nothing except our will.
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It is very easy to accuse a government of imperfection, for all mortal things are full of it.
Michel de Montaigne
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Water, earth, air, fire, and the other parts of this structure of mine are no more instruments of your life than instruments of your death. Why do you fear your last day? It contributes no more to your death than each of the others. The last step does not cause the fatigue, but reveals it. All days travel toward death, the last one reaches it.
Michel de Montaigne
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The most universal quality is diversity.
Michel de Montaigne
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Is it reasonable that even the arts should take advantage of and profit by our natural stupidity and feebleness of mind?
Michel de Montaigne
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God is favorable to those whom he makes to die by degrees 'tis the only benefit of old age. The last death will be so much the less painful: it will kill but a quarter of a man or but half a one at most.
Michel de Montaigne
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The clatter of arms drowns out the voice of law.
Michel de Montaigne
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In his commerce with men I mean him to include- and that principally- those who live only in the memory of books. By means of history he will frequent those great souls of former years. If you want it to be so, history can be a waste of time it can also be, if you want it to be so, a study bearing fruit beyond price.
Michel de Montaigne
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In plain truth, lying is an accursed vice. We are not men, nor have any other tie upon another, but by our word.
Michel de Montaigne
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The common notions that we find in credit around us and infused into our souls by our fathers' seed, these seem to be the universal and natural ones. Whence it comes to pass that what is off the hinges of custom, people believe to be off the hinges of reason.
Michel de Montaigne
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What fear has once made me will, I am bound still to will when without fear.
Michel de Montaigne
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He that is a friend to himself, know he is a friend to all.
Michel de Montaigne
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Every abridgement of a good book is a fool abridged.
Michel de Montaigne
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He that had never seen a river, imagined the first he met with to be the sea.
Michel de Montaigne
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We took advantage of [the Indians'] ignorance and inexperience to incline them the more easily toward treachery, lewdness, avarice, and every sort of inhumanity and cruelty, after the example and pattern of our ways.
Michel de Montaigne
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Laws are often made by fools, and even more often by men who fail in equity because they hate equality: but always by men, vain authorities who can resolve nothing.
Michel de Montaigne
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How many quarrels, and how important, has the doubt as to the meaning of this syllable Hoc produced for the world!
Michel de Montaigne