Montesquieu Quotes

128 Sourced Quotes

Thou knowest that ever since the invention of gunpowder…I continually tremble lest men should, in the end, uncover some secret which would provide a short way of abolishing mankind, of annihilating peoples and nations in their entirety.

Montesquieu
Money is a sign which represents the value of all merchandise.

Montesquieu
Slavery, properly so called, is the establishment of a right which gives to one man such a power over another as renders him absolute master of his life and fortune.

Montesquieu
In moderate states, there is a compensation for heavy taxes; it is liberty. In despotic states, there is an equivalent for liberty; it is the modest taxes.

Montesquieu
[The Ottoman Empire] whose sick body was not supported by a mild and regular diet, but by a powerful treatment, which continually exhausted it.

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

Montesquieu
If triangles had a god, he would have three sides.

Montesquieu
There is no word that has admitted of more various significations, and has made more different impressions on human minds, than that of Liberty. Some have taken it for a facility of deposing a person on whom they had conferred a tyrannical authority; others for the power of choosing a person whom they are obliged to obey; others for the right of bearing arms, and of being thereby enabled to use violence, others in fine for the privilege of being governed by a native of their own country or by their own laws.

Montesquieu
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.

Montesquieu
Mankind by their industry, and by the influence of good laws, have rendered the earth more proper for their abode.

Montesquieu
At our coming into the world, we contract an immense debt to our country, which we can never discharge.

Montesquieu
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.

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

Montesquieu
Nature is just to all mankind, and repays them for their industry. She renders them industrious by annexing rewards in proportion to their labor.

Montesquieu
Human laws made to direct the will ought to give precepts, and not counsels.

Montesquieu
In every government there are three sorts of power: the legislative; the executive in respect to things dependent on the law of nations; and the executive in regard to matters that depend on the civil law.

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

Montesquieu
The less luxury there is in a republic, the more it is perfect.

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

Montesquieu
It is necessary from the very nature of things that power should be a check to power.

Montesquieu
The law of nations is naturally founded on this principle, that different nations ought in time of peace to do one another all the good they can, and in time of war as little injury as possible, without prejudicing their real interests.

Montesquieu
It is requisite the government be so constituted as one man need not be afraid of another.

Montesquieu
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.

Montesquieu
It is clear that in a monarchy, where he who commands the exceution of the laws generally thinks himself above them, there is lessneed of virtue than in a popular government, where the person entrusted with the execution of the laws is sensible of his being subject to their direction.

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
Thus the creation, which seems an arbitrary act, supposes laws as invariable as those of the fatality of the Atheists. It would be absurd to say that the Creator might govern the world without those rules, since without them it could not subsist.

Montesquieu
Countries are not cultivated in proportion to their fertility, but to their liberty.

Montesquieu
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.

Montesquieu
The crime against nature will never make any great progress in society unless people are prompted to it by some particular custom.

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

Montesquieu