Montesquieu Quotes
I have read descriptions of Paradise that would make any sensible person stop wanting to go there.
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.
The mood and temper of the public in regard to the treatment of crime and criminals is one of the most unfailing tests of the civilisation of any country.
Countries are not cultivated in proportion to their fertility, but to their liberty.
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.
The crime against nature will never make any great progress in society unless people are prompted to it by some particular custom.
Those who have few affairs to attend to are great speakers. The less men think, the more they talk.
It is requisite the government be so constituted as one man need not be afraid of another.
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.
I shall ever repeat it, that mankind are governed not by extremes, but by principals of moderation.
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.
The public business must be carried on with a certain motion, neither too quick nor too slow.
When God endowed human beings with brains, He did not intend to guarantee them.
The culminating point of administration is to know well how much power, great or small, we ought to use in all circumstances.
In the birth of societies it is the chiefs of states who give it its special character; and afterward it is this special character that forms the chiefs of state.
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.
Politics are a smooth file, which cuts gradually, and attains its end by slow progression.
Certain kinds of foolishness are such that a greater foolishness would be better.
In a republic there is no coercive force as in other governments, the laws must therefore endeavor to supply this defect.
In constitutional states, liberty is compensation for heavy taxes; in dictatorships, the subsititue is light taxes.
A fondness for reading changes the inevitable dull hours of our life into exquisite hours of delight.
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.
Vanity and pride of nations; vanity is as advantageous to a government as pride is dangerous.
Friendship is a contract in which we render small services in expectation of big ones.
A man who writes well writes not as others write, but as he himself writes; it is often in speaking badly that he speaks well.
I can assure you that no kingdom has ever had as many civil wars as the kingdom of Christ.
Every man is capable of doing good to another, but to contribute to the happiness of an entire society is to become akin to the gods
We receive three educations, one from our parents, one from our school masters, and one from the world. The third contradicts all that the first two teach us.
A truly virtuous man would come to the aid of the most distant stranger as quickly as to his own friend. If men were perfectly virtuous, they wouldn’t have friends.
There is no greater tyranny than that which is perpetrated under the shield of the law and in the name of justice.
False happiness renders men stern and proud and that happiness is never communicated. True happiness renders kind and sensible and that happiness is always shared.
