Top 80 Quotes & Sayings by Montesquieu
Explore popular quotes and sayings by a French philosopher Montesquieu.
Last updated on December 21, 2024.
I have never known any distress that an hour's reading did not relieve.
Liberty is the right to do what the law permits.
No kingdom has shed more blood than the kingdom of Christ.
It is always the adventurers who do great things, not the sovereigns of great empires.
Useless laws weaken the necessary laws.
To become truly great, one has to stand with people, not above them.
Men, who are rogues individually, are in the mass very honorable people.
Power ought to serve as a check to power.
In bodies moved, the motion is received, increased, diminished, or lost, according to the relations of the quantity of matter and velocity; each diversity is uniformity, each change is constancy.
I have always observed that to succeed in the world one should appear like a fool but be wise.
When the body of the people is possessed of the supreme power, it is called a democracy.
Religious wars are not caused by the fact that there is more than one religion, but by the spirit of intolerance... the spread of which can only be regarded as the total eclipse of human reason.
Luxury ruins republics; poverty, monarchies.
Do you think that God will punish them for not practicing a religion which he did not reveal to them?
The spirit of moderation should also be the spirit of the lawgiver.
Friendship is an arrangement by which we undertake to exchange small favors for big ones.
To love to read is to exchange hours of ennui for hours of delight.
There are only two cases in which war is just: first, in order to resist the aggression of an enemy, and second, in order to help an ally who has been attacked.
Countries are well cultivated, not as they are fertile, but as they are free.
But constant experience shows us that every man invested with power is apt to abuse it, and to carry his authority as far as it will go.
The sublimity of administration consists in knowing the proper degree of power that should be exerted on different occasions.
What orators lack in depth they make up for in length.
The deterioration of a government begins almost always by the decay of its principles.
The tyranny of a prince in an oligarchy is not so dangerous to the public welfare as the apathy of a citizen in a democracy.
If we only wanted to be happy, it would be easy; but we want to be happier than other people, and that is almost always difficult, since we think them happier than they are.
The less men think, the more they talk.
In most things success depends on knowing how long it takes to succeed.
There are three species of government: republican, monarchical, and despotic.
An empire founded by war has to maintain itself by war.
Republics end through luxury; monarchies through poverty.
The object of war is victory; that of victory is conquest; and that of conquest preservation.
In the infancy of societies, the chiefs of state shape its institutions; later the institutions shape the chiefs of state.
Society is the union of men and not the men themselves.
Weak minds exaggerate too much the wrong done to the Africans.
If I knew of something that could serve my nation but would ruin another, I would not propose it to my prince, for I am first a man and only then a Frenchman... because I am necessarily a man, and only accidentally am I French.
Lunch kills half of Paris, supper the other half.
Liberty is the right of doing whatever the laws permit.
False happiness renders men stern and proud, and that happiness is never communicated. True happiness renders them kind and sensible, and that happiness is always shared.
Not to be loved is a misfortune, but it is an insult to be loved no longer.
If the triangles made a god, they would give him three sides.
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.
The state of slavery is in its own nature bad.
The reason the Romans built their great paved highways was because they had such inconvenient footwear.
If triangles had a god, they would give him three sides.
There is no crueler tyranny than that which is perpetuated under the shield of law and in the name of justice.
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.
You have to study a great deal to know a little.
The severity of the laws prevents their execution.
There is no nation so powerful, as the one that obeys its laws not from principals of fear or reason, but from passion.
A nation may lose its liberties in a day and not miss them in a century.
A man should be mourned at his birth, not at his death.
As soon as man enters into a state of society he loses the sense of his weakness; equality ceases, and then commences the state of war.
Peace is a natural effect of trade.
We should weep for men at their birth, not at their death.
There is only one thing that can form a bond between men, and that is gratitude... we cannot give someone else greater power over us than we have ourselves.
There is no greater tyranny than that which is perpetrated under the shield of the law and in the name of justice.
I have always observed that to succeed in the world one should seem a fool, but be wise.
Success in the majority of circumstances depends on knowing how long it takes to succeed.
It is not the young people that degenerate; they are not spoiled till those of mature age are already sunk into corruption.
They who assert that a blind fatality produced the various effects we behold in this world talk very absurdly; for can anything be more unreasonable than to pretend that a blind fatality could be productive of intelligent beings?
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