Baron de Montesquieu
Each citizen contributes to the revenues of the State a portion of his property in order that his tenure of the rest may be secure.Collection: Order
Wherever I find envy I take a pleasure in provoking it: I always praise before an envious man those who make him grow pale.Collection: Men
The wickedness of mankind makes it necessary for the law to suppose them better than they really are.Collection: Law
Oh, how empty is praise when it reflects back to its origin!Collection: Praise
Men in excess of happiness or misery are equally inclined to severity. Witness conquerors and monks! It is mediocrity alone, and a mixture of prosperous and adverse fortune that inspire us with lenity and pity.Collection: Men
If you would be holy, instruct your children, because all the good acts they perform will be imputed to you.Collection: Children
Those who have few affairs to attend to are great speakers. The less men think, the more they talk.Collection: Men
In the matter of dress one should always keep below one's ability.Collection: Dresses
The pagan religion, which prohibited only some of the grosser crimes, and which stopped the hand but meddled not with the heart, might have crimes that were inexplicable.Collection: Heart
A rational army would run away.Collection: Running
The spirit of commerce... renders every man willing to live on his own property...& prevents the growth of luxury.Collection: Men
There is still another inconvenieney in conquests made by democracies; their government is ever odious to the conquered states. It is apparently monarchical, but in reality it is more oppressive than monarchy, as the experience of all ages and countries evinces.Collection: Country
The Ottoman Empire whose sick body was not supported by a mild and regular diet, but by a powerful treatment, which continually exhausted it.Collection: Powerful
The culminating point of administration is to know well how much power, great or small, we ought to use in all circumstances.Collection: Power
To lend money without interest, is certainly an action laudable and extremely good; but it is obvious, that it is only a counsel of religion, and not a civil law.Collection: Law
I shall ever repeat it, that mankind are governed not by extremes, but by principals of moderation.Collection: Moderation
The public business must be carried on with a certain motion, neither too quick nor too slow.Collection: Certain
Injustice towards others is a threat to everybodyCollection: Clever
There is hardly any grief that an hour's reading will not dissipate.Collection: Grief
When a government is arrived to that degree of corruption as to be incapable of reforming itself, it would not lose much by being new moulded.Collection: Government
The Christian religion is a stranger to mere despotic power. The mildness so frequently recommended in the Gospel is incompatible with the despotic rage.Collection: Christian
Great commanders write their actions with simplicity; because they receive more glory from facts than from words.Collection: Writing
This punishment of death is the remedy, as it were, of a sick society.Collection: Punishment
Trade is the best cure for prejudice.Collection: Prejudice
It is clear that in a monarchy, where he who commands the exceution of the laws generally thinks himself above them, there is lessneed of virtue than in a popular government, where the person entrusted with the execution of the laws is sensible of his being subject to their direction.Collection: Thinking
Coffee renders many foolish people temporarily capable of wise actionsCollection: Wise
The prejudices of superstition are superior to all others, and have the strongest influence on the human mind.Collection: Mind
The less luxury there is in a republic, the more it is perfect.Collection: Luxury
Europe is a state with several provincesCollection: Country
The spirit of commerce is frugality, economy, moderation, labor, ponderance, tranquillity, order, and rule. So long as this spirit subsides, the riches it produces have no bad effect. The mischief is when excessive wealth destroys the spirit of commerce, then it is that the conveniences of inequality... are felt.Collection: Order
There are bad examples which are worse than crimes; and more states have perished from the violation of morality than from the violation of law.Collection: Law
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.Collection: Cutting
The majority of men are more capable of great actions than of good ones.Collection: Men
A prince who loves and fears religion is a lion who stoops to the hand that strokes or to the voice that appeases him. He who fears and hates religion is like the savage beast that growls and bites the chain, which prevents his flying on the passenger. He who has no religion at all is that terrible animal who perceives his liberty only when he tears in pieces, and when he devours.Collection: Hate
Honor is unknown in despotic states.Collection: Honor
I shall be obliged to wander to the right and to the left, that I may investigate and discover the truth.Collection: May
Republics are brought to their ends by luxury; monarchies by poverty.Collection: Luxury
A love of the republic in a democracy is a love of the democracy, as the latter is that of equality. A love of the democracy is likewise that of frugality. Since every individual ought here to enjoy the same happiness, and the same advantages, they should consequently taste the same pleasures and form the same hopes, which cannot be expected but from a general frugality.Collection: Democracy
Laws, in their most general signification, are the necessary relations derived from the nature of things.Collection: Law
The English are busy; they don't have time to be polite.Collection: Busy
Virtue in a republic is the love of one's country, that is the love of equality.Collection: Country
When virtue is banished, ambition invades the minds of those who are disposed to receive it and avarice possesses the whole community.Collection: Ambition
Political liberty is to be found only in moderate governments.Collection: Government
The incomparable stupidity of life teaches us to love our parents; divine philosophy teaches us to forgive them.Collection: Love
I have ever held it as a maxim never to do that through another which it was impossible for me to execute myselfCollection: Impossible
When one wants to change manners and customs, one should not do so by changing the laws.Collection: Law
There have never been so many civil wars as in the Kingdom of Christ.Collection: War
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.Collection: Moral
The coffee is prepared in such a way that it makes those who drink it witty: at least there is not a single soul who, on quitting the house, does not believe himself four times wittier that when he entered it.Collection: Witty