Baron de Montesquieu Quotes - Page 3

Not to be loved is a misfortune, but it is an insult to be loved no longer.

Trade is the best cure for prejudice.

There are bad examples which are worse than crimes; and more states have perished from the violation of morality than from the violation of law.

Lunch kills half of Paris, supper the other half.

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

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.

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

The Christian religion is a stranger to mere despotic power. The mildness so frequently recommended in the Gospel is incompatible with the despotic rage.

Life was given to me as a favor, so I may abandon it when it is one no longer.

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

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

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

I suffer from the disease of writing books and being ashamed of them when they are finished.

An injustice to one is a threat made to all

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

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

Liberty itself has appeared intolerable to those nations who have not been accustomed to enjoy it.

When the savages of Louisiana wish to have fruit, they cut the tree at the bottom and gather the fruit. That is exactly a despotic government.

I have read descriptions of Paradise that would make any sensible person stop wanting to go there.

There should be weeping at a man's birth, not at his death.

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

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

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

The spirit of commerce is frugality, economy, moderation, labor, ponderance, tranquillity, order, and rule. So long as this spirit subsides, the riches it produces have no bad effect. The mischief is when excessive wealth destroys the spirit of commerce, then it is that the conveniences of inequality... are felt.

There is no nation so powerful, as the one that obeys its laws not from principals of fear or reason, but from passion.