Baron De Montesquieu Quotes

Love of reading enables a man to exchange the weary hours, which come to every one, for hours of delight.

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.

There is hardly any grief that an hour's reading will not dissipate.

The culminating point of administration is to know well how much power, great or small, we ought to use in all circumstances.

A fondness for reading changes the inevitable dull hours of our life into exquisite hours of delight.

At our coming into the world we contract an immense debt to our country, which we can never discharge.

Vanity and pride of nations; vanity is as advantageous to a government as pride is dangerous.

Man is a social animal formed to please in society.

Coffee renders many foolish people temporarily capable of wise actions

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.

To succeed in the world we must look foolish but be wise.

It is requisite the government be so constituted as one man need not be afraid of another.

The spirit of commerce ... renders every man willing to live on his own property ... & prevents the growth of luxury.

Wherever I find envy I take a pleasure in provoking it: I always praise before an envious man those who make him grow pale.

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.

Political liberty in a citizen is that tranquillity of spirit which comes from the opinion each one has of his security, and in order for him to have this liberty the government must be such that one citizen cannot fear another citizen.

When we seek after wit, we discover only foolishness.

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.

What cowardice it is to be dismayed by the happiness of others and devastated by there good fortune.

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.

As virtue is necessary in a republic, and honor in a monarchy, fear is what is required in a despotism. As for virtue, it is not at all necessary, and honor would be dangerous there.

Europe is a state with several provinces

I like peasants-they are not sophisticated enough to reason speciously.

Knowledge humanizes mankind, and reason inclines to mildness; but prejudices eradicate every tender disposition.

I should like to abolish funerals; the time to mourn a person is at his birth, not his death.

The laws do not take upon them to punish any other than overt acts.

The majority of men are more capable of great actions than of good ones.

This punishment of death is the remedy, as it were, of a sick society.

In every government there are three sorts of power: the legislative; the executive in respect to things dependent on the law of nations; and the executive in regard to matters that depend on the civil law.

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.

If you would be holy, instruct your children, because all the good acts they perform will be imputed to you.

I shall ever repeat it, that mankind are governed not by extremes, but by principals of moderation.

We ought to be very cautious and circumspect in the prosecution of magic and heresy. The attempt to put down these two crimes may be extremely perilous to liberty.

Honor is unknown in despotic states.

Vanity is as advantageous to a government as pride is dangerous. To be convinced of this we need only represent, on the one hand,the numberless benefits which result from vanity, as industry, the arts, fashions, politeness, and taste; and on the other, the infinite evils which spring from the pride of certain nations, a laziness, poverty, a total neglect of everything.

If triangles had a god, he would have three sides.

There have never been so many civil wars as in the Kingdom of Christ.

The less luxury there is in a republic, the more it is perfect.

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.

The power of divorce can be given only to those who feel the inconveniences of marriage, and who are sensible of the moment when it is for their interest to make them cease.

Slowness is frequently the cause of much greater slowness.

When the [law making] and [law enforcement] powers are united in the same person ... there can be no liberty.

Study has been for me the sovereign remedy against all the disappointments of life. I have never known any trouble that an hour's reading would not dissipate.

Liberty ... is there only when there is no abuse of power.

Laws, in their most general signification, are the necessary relations arising from the nature of things. In this sense all beings have their laws: the Deity His laws, the material world its laws, the intelligences superior to man their laws, the beasts their laws, man his laws.

The harshest tyranny is that which acts under the protection of legality and the banner of justice.

Sometimes a man who deserves to be looked upon because he is a fool is despised only because he is a lawyer.

The wickedness of mankind makes it necessary for the law to suppose them better than they really are.

Virtue in a republic is the love of one's country, that is the love of equality.

Law should be like death, which spares no one.

Democracy is corrupted not only when the spirit of equality is corrupted, but likewise when they fall into a spirit of extreme equality.

I shall be obliged to wander to the right and to the left, that I may investigate and discover the truth.

Virtue has needs of limits.

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.

Countries are not cultivated in proportion to their fertility, but to their liberty.

The state is the association of men, and not men themselves; the citizen may perish, and the man remain.

Certain kinds of foolishness are such that a greater foolishness would be better.

Oh, how empty is praise when it reflects back to its origin!

Great commanders write their actions with simplicity; because they receive more glory from facts than from words.

There is a very good saying that if triangles invented a god, they would make him three-sided.

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.

It is difficult for the united states to be all of equal power and extent.

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.

Brutes are deprived of the high advantages which we have; but they have some which we have not. They have not our hopes, but theyare without our fears; they are subject like us to death, but without knowing it; even most of them are more attentive than we to self-preservation, and do not make so bad a use of their passions.

As men are affected in all ages by the same passions, the occasions which bring about great changes are different, but the causes are always the same.

In the state of nature ... all men are born equal, but they cannot continue in this equality. Society makes them lose it, and they recover it only by the protection of the law.

Injustice towards others is a threat to everybody

If I knew something that would serve my country but would harm mankind, I would never reveal it; for I am a citizen of humanity first and by necessity, and a citizen of France second, and only by accident

It is necessary from the very nature of things that power should be a check to power.

No tyranny is more cruel than the one practised in the shadow of the laws and under color of justice - when, so to speak, one proceeds to drown the unfortunate on the very plank by which they had saved themselves. And since a tyrant never lacks instruments for his tyranny, Tiberius always found judges ready to condemn as many people as he might suspect.

The love of democracy is that of equality.

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.

It is unreasonable ... to oblige a man not to attempt the defense of his own life.

Vitam Impendere Vero (I consecrate my life to truth).

There are countries where a man is worth nothing; there are others where he is worth less than nothing.

The false notion of miracles comes of our vanity, which makes us believe we are important enough for the Supreme Being to upset nature on our behalf.

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.

Political liberty is to be found only in moderate governments.

In a republic there is no coercive force as in other governments, the laws must therefore endeavor to supply this defect.

When God endowed human beings with brains, He did not intend to guarantee them.

In the matter of dress one should always keep below one's ability.

The public business must be carried on with a certain motion, neither too quick nor too slow.

Power should be a check on power.

Friendship is a contract in which we render small services in expectation of big ones.

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.

Trade is the best cure for prejudice.

For a country, everything will be lost when the jobs of an economist and a banker become highly respected professions.

Never create by law what can be accomplished by morality.

A good writer does not write as people write, but as he writes.

[The Pope] will make the king believe that three are only one, that the bread he eats is not bread ... and a thousand other things of the same kind.

A rational army would run away.

Wonderful maxim: not to talk of things any more after they are done.

When virtue is banished, ambition invades the minds of those who are disposed to receive it and avarice possesses the whole community.

I never listen to calumnies, because if they are untrue I run the risk of being deceived, and if they be true, of hating persons not worth thinking about.