Montesquieu Quotes

We should weep for men at their birth, not at their death.

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.

Montesquieu

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

Montesquieu

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

Montesquieu

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

Montesquieu

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

Montesquieu

There are three species of government: republican, monarchical, and despotic.

Montesquieu

To become truly great, one has to stand with people, not above them.

Montesquieu

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.

Montesquieu

The less men think, the more they talk.

Montesquieu

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

Montesquieu

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

Montesquieu

When the body of the people is possessed of the supreme power, it is called a democracy.

Montesquieu

Power ought to serve as a check to power.

Montesquieu

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.

Montesquieu

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.

Montesquieu

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

Montesquieu