Baron de Montesquieu Quotes - Page 5

A prince who loves and fears religion is a lion who stoops to the hand that strokes or to the voice that appeases him. He who fears and hates religion is like the savage beast that growls and bites the chain, which prevents his flying on the passenger. He who has no religion at all is that terrible animal who perceives his liberty only when he tears in pieces, and when he devours.

Power ought to serve as a check to power.

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.

I shall be obliged to wander to the right and to the left, that I may investigate and discover the truth.

Honor is unknown in despotic states.

Law in general is human reason, inasmuch as it governs all the inhabitants of the earth: the political and civil laws of each nation ought to be only the particular cases in which human reason is applied.

A love of the republic in a democracy is a love of the democracy, as the latter is that of equality. A love of the democracy is likewise that of frugality. Since every individual ought here to enjoy the same happiness, and the same advantages, they should consequently taste the same pleasures and form the same hopes, which cannot be expected but from a general frugality.

Peace is a natural effect of trade.

People here argue about religion interminably, but it appears that they are competing at the same time to see who can be the least devout.

The success of most things depends upon knowing how long it will take to succeed.

Laws undertake to punish only overt acts.

Virtue in a republic is the love of one's country, that is the love of equality.

Republics are brought to their ends by luxury; monarchies by poverty.

Laws, in their most general signification, are the necessary relations derived from the nature of things.

The English are busy; they don't have time to be polite.

The incomparable stupidity of life teaches us to love our parents; divine philosophy teaches us to forgive them.

When virtue is banished, ambition invades the minds of those who are disposed to receive it and avarice possesses the whole community.

I have always observed that to succeed in the world one should seem a fool, but be wise.

I have ever held it as a maxim never to do that through another which it was impossible for me to execute myself

When one wants to change manners and customs, one should not do so by changing the laws.

Countries are well cultivated, not as they are fertile, but as they are free.

Christians are beginning to lose the spirit of intolerance which animated them: experience has shown the error of the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, and of the persecution of those Christians in France whose belief differed a little from that of the king. They have realized that zeal for the advancement of religion is different from a due attachment to it; and that in order to love it and fulfil its behests, it is not necessary to hate and persecute those who are opposed to it.

There have never been so many civil wars as in the Kingdom of Christ.

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.

There is something in animals beside the power of motion. They are not machines; they feel.