Quotes by Montesquieu

"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."

"I have never known any distress that an hour's reading did not relieve."

"Friendship is an arrangement by which we undertake to exchange small favors for big ones."

"If triangles had a god, they would give him three sides."

"The deterioration of a government begins almost always by the decay of its principles."

"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 less men think, the more they talk."

"Men, who are rogues individually, are in the mass very honorable people."

"Society is the union of men and not the men themselves."

"Power ought to serve as a check to power."

"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."

"An empire founded by war has to maintain itself by war."

"A man should be mourned at his birth, not at his death."

"Men should be bewailed at their birth, and not at their death."