Top 100 Quotes About Montesquieu
#1. A father of the church said that property was theft, many centuries before Proudhon was born. Bourdaloue reaffirmed it. Montesquieu was the inventor of national workshops and of the theory that the state owed every man a living. Nay, was not the church herself the first organized democracy?
James Russell Lowell
#3. Many a person who could not comprehend Rousseau, and would be puzzled by Montesquieu, could understand Paine as an open book. He wrote with a clarity, a sharpness of outline and exactness of speech that even a schoolboy should be able to grasp.
Thomas A. Edison
#4. After Montesquieu, the next great addition to Sociology (which is the term I may be allowed to invent to designate Social Physics) was made by Condorcet, proceeding on the views suggested by his illustrious friend Turgot.
Auguste Comte
#5. [Montesquieu] lifted the veil from the venerable errors which enslaved opinion, and pointed the way to those luminous truths of which he had but a glimpse himself.
James Madison
#6. The lively phraseology of Montesquieu was the result of long meditation. His words, as light as wings, bear on them grave reflections.
Joseph Joubert
#7. Montesquieu well knew, and justly admired, the happy constitution of this country [Great Britain], where fixed and known laws equally restrain monarchy from tyranny and liberty from licentiousness.
Lord Chesterfield
#8. Now, there is no such thing as 'man' in this world. In my life I have seen Frenchmen, Italians, Russians, and so on. I even know, thanks to Montesquieu, that one can be Persian. But as for man, I declare I've never encountered him.
Joseph De Maistre
#9. Montesquieu wrote: "I have never known any distress that an hour of reading did not relieve." If one substituted the word music for reading, the exact same dictum applied to me.
Zhu Xiao-Mei
#10. When the laws have ceased to be executed, as this can only come from the corruption of the republic, the state is already lost.
Montesquieu
#13. 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.
Baron De Montesquieu
#14. The state is the association of men, and not men themselves; the citizen may perish, and the man remain.
Baron De Montesquieu
#15. 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.
Baron De Montesquieu
#16. 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.
Baron De Montesquieu
#17. 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.
Baron De Montesquieu
#19. I should like to abolish funerals; the time to mourn a person is at his birth, not his death.
Baron De Montesquieu
#21. When the [law making] and [law enforcement] powers are united in the same person ... there can be no liberty.
Baron De Montesquieu
#23. Knowledge humanizes mankind, and reason inclines to mildness; but prejudices eradicate every tender disposition.
Baron De Montesquieu
#24. 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.
Baron De Montesquieu
#25. Great commanders write their actions with simplicity; because they receive more glory from facts than from words.
Baron De Montesquieu
#27. Liberty itself has appeared intolerable to those nations who have not been accustomed to enjoy it.
Baron De Montesquieu
#28. One more organ or one less in our body would give us a different intelligence. In fact, all the established laws as to why our body is a certain way would be different if our body were not that way.
Montesquieu
#29. Vanity and pride of nations; vanity is as advantageous to a government as pride is dangerous.
Baron De Montesquieu
#31. In the infancy of societies, the chiefs of state shape its institutions; later the institutions shape the chiefs of state.
Charles De Montesquieu
#32. At our coming into the world we contract an immense debt to our country, which we can never discharge.
Baron De Montesquieu
#34. Human laws made to direct the will ought to give precepts, and not counsels.
Baron De Montesquieu
#35. Friendship is a contract in which we render small services in expectation of big ones.
Baron De Montesquieu
#36. Politics are a smooth file, which cuts gradually, and attains its end by slow progression.
Baron De Montesquieu
#39. 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.
Montesquieu
#40. When one wants to change manners and customs, one should not do so by changing the laws.
Baron De Montesquieu
#42. There is no greater tyranny than that which is perpetrated under the shield of the law and in the name of justice.
Montesquieu
#43. The wickedness of mankind makes it necessary for the law to suppose them better than they really are.
Baron De Montesquieu
#44. The sublimity of administration consists in knowing the proper degree of power that should be exerted on different occasions.
Charles De Montesquieu
#45. It is necessary from the very nature of things that power should be a check to power.
Baron De Montesquieu
#46. 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.
Charles De Montesquieu
#47. For a country, everything will be lost when the jobs of an economist and a banker become highly respected professions.
Baron De Montesquieu
#48. If one only wished to be happy, this could be easily accomplished; but we wish to be happier than other people, and this is always difficult, for we believe others to be happier than they are.
Montesquieu
#49. There is as yet no liberty if the power of judging be not separated from legislative power and the executrix
Baron De Montesquieu
#50. The reason the Romans built their great paved highways was because they had such inconvenient footwear.
Charles De Montesquieu
#53. 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.
Montesquieu
#56. I can assure you that no kingdom has ever had as many civil wars as the kingdom of Christ.
Montesquieu
#57. The crime against nature will never make any great progress in society unless people are prompted to it by some particular custom.
Baron De Montesquieu
#59. 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.
Baron De Montesquieu
#60. In constitutional states, liberty is compensation for heavy taxes; in dictatorships, the subsititue is light taxes.
Baron De Montesquieu
#62. I suffer from the disease of writing books and being ashamed of them when they are finished.
Baron De Montesquieu
#64. The public business must be carried on with a certain motion, neither too quick nor too slow.
Baron De Montesquieu
#65. If triangles made a god, they would give him three sides.
Montesquieu
#66. There is a very good saying that if triangles invented a god, they would make him three-sided.
Baron De Montesquieu
#67. It is always the adventurers who do great things, not the sovereigns of great empires.
Charles De Montesquieu
#69. 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.
Baron De Montesquieu
#70. Countries are not cultivated in proportion to their fertility, but to their liberty.
Baron De Montesquieu
#71. The history of commerce is that of the communication of the people.
Montesquieu
#72. It is difficult for the united states to be all of equal power and extent.
Baron De Montesquieu
#73. 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.
Baron De Montesquieu
#75. An author is a fool who, not content with boring those he lives with, insists on boring future generations.
Montesquieu
#76. There is no one, says another, whom fortune does not visit once in his life; but when she does not find him ready to receive her, she walks in at the door, and flies out at the window.
Charles De Montesquieu
#79. The Ottoman Empire whose sick body was not supported by a mild and regular diet, but by a powerful treatment, which continually exhausted it.
Baron De Montesquieu
#81. Countries are well cultivated, not as they are fertile, but as they are free.
Montesquieu
#83. A conqueror, I say, can change the course of everything, and muffled tyranny is the first thing which is liable to violence.
Montesquieu
#84. Certain kinds of foolishness are such that a greater foolishness would be better.
Baron De Montesquieu
#85. Do you think that God will punish them for not practicing a religion which he did not reveal to them?
Montesquieu
#86. What unhappy beings men are! They constantly waver between false hopes and silly fears, and instead of relying on reason they create monsters to frighten themselves with, and phantoms which lead them astray.
Montesquieu
#87. The harshest tyranny is that which acts under the protection of legality and the banner of justice.
Baron De Montesquieu
#89. If only we wanted to be happy, it would be easy; but we want to be happier than other people, which is difficult, since we think them happier than they are.
Montesquieu
#90. 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.
Charles De Montesquieu
#92. 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.
Baron De Montesquieu
#94. 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.
Baron De Montesquieu
#95. That anyone who possesses power has a tendency to abuse it is an eternal truth. They tend to go as far as the barriers will allow.
Baron De Montesquieu
#96. In republican governments, men are all equal; equal they are also in despotic governments: in the former, because they are everything; in the latter, because they are nothing.
Baron De Montesquieu
#97. Virtue in a republic is the love of one's country, that is the love of equality.
Baron De Montesquieu
#98. [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.
Baron De Montesquieu
#99. When the savages of Louisiana are desirous of fruit, they cut the tree to the root and gather the fruit. This is an emblem of despotic government.
Montesquieu
#100. 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.
Baron De Montesquieu
