Montesquieu Quotes

128 Sourced Quotes

It is a misfortune to human nature, when religion is given by a conqueror. The Mahometan religion, which speaks only by the sword, acts still upon men with that destructive spirit with which it was founded.

Montesquieu
What orators lack in profundity, they will give you in length.

Montesquieu
If the triangles were to make a God they would give him three sides.

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
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
Study has been my sovereign remedy against the worries of life. I have never had a care that an hour's reading could not dispel.

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
Democracy has two excesses to avoid: the spirit of inequality, which leads to an aristocracy, or to the government of a single individual; and the spirit of extreme equality, which conducts it to despotism, as the despotism of a single individual finishes by conquest.

Montesquieu
It is difficult for the united states to be all of equal power and extent.

Montesquieu
Royal authority is a great spring that should move easily and noiselessly.

Montesquieu
You have to study a great deal to know a little.

Montesquieu
In republican governments, men are all equal; equal they are also in despotic governments: in the former, because they are everything; in the latter, because they are nothing.

Montesquieu
Christianity stamped its character on jurisprudence; for empire has ever a connection with the priesthood.

Montesquieu
Politics are a smooth file, which cuts gradually, and attains its end by slow progression.

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

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

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
Vanity is as advantageous to a government as pride is dangerous.

Montesquieu
[Britain is] a nation that may be justly called a republic, disguised under the form of a monarchy.

Montesquieu
To lend money without interest, is certainly an action laudable and extremely good; but it is obvious, that it is only a counsel of religion, and not a civil law.

Montesquieu