Montesquieu Quotes

128 Sourced Quotes

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

Montesquieu
I shall ever repeat it, that mankind are governed not by extremes, but by principles of moderation.

Montesquieu
The gods have attached almost as many misfortunes to liberty as to servitude.

Montesquieu
When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person, or in the same body of magistrates, there can be no liberty; because apprehensions may arise, lest the same monarch or senate should enact tyrannical laws, to execute them in a tyrannical manner.

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

Montesquieu
The public business must be carried on with a certain motion, neither too quick nor too slow.

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

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

Montesquieu
The corruption of each government almost always begins with that of its principles.

Montesquieu
Men should be bewailed at their birth, and not at their death.

Montesquieu
I write to thee on this subject, [friend], because I am angry at a book which I have just left, which is so large, that it seems to contain universal science, but it hath almost split my head, without teaching me anything.

Montesquieu
In most things success depends on knowing how long it takes to succeed.

Montesquieu
Democratic and aristocratic states are not in their own nature free. Political liberty is to be found only in moderate governments; and even in these it is not always found. It is there only when there is no abuse of power. 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. Is it not strange, though true, to say that virtue itself has need of limits?

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
The society of women endangers men's morals and refines their manners.

Montesquieu
They who assert that a blind fatality produced the various effects we behold in this world talk very absurdly; for can anything be more unreasonable than to pretend that a blind fatality could be productive of intelligent beings.

Montesquieu
Men who have absolutely nothing, such as beggars, have many children.

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

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

Montesquieu
In France there are three kinds of professions: the church, the sword, and the long robe. Each hath a sovereign contempt for the other two. For example, a man who ought to be despised only for being a fool is often so because he is a lawyer.

Montesquieu
Of all kind of authors there are none I despise more than compilers, who search every where for shreds of other men's works, which they join to their own, like so many pieces of green turf in a garden: they are not at all superior to compositors in a printing house, who range the types, which, collected together, make a book, towards which they contribute nothing but the labours of the hand. I would have original writers respected, and it seems to me a kind of profanation to take those pieces from the sanctuary in which they reside, and to expose them to a contempt they do not deserve. When a man hath nothing new to say, why does not he hold his tongue? What business have we with this double employment?

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

Montesquieu
In bodies moved, the motion is received, increased, diminished, or lost, according to the relations of the quantity of matter and velocity; each diversity is uniformity, each change is constancy.

Montesquieu
This state [England] will perish when legislative power is more corrupt than executive power.

Montesquieu