Montesquieu - The Spirit of the Laws (1748)

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Society is the union of men and not the men themselves.

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

Montesquieu
The English have taken their idea of political government from the Germans. This fine system was found in the forests.

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

Montesquieu
Republics end through luxury; monarchies through poverty.

Montesquieu
Laws, in their most general signification, are the necessary relations arising from the nature of things. In this sense all beings have their laws: the Deity His laws, the material world its laws, the intelligences superior to man their laws, the beasts their laws, man his laws.

Montesquieu
If a republic is small, it is destroyed by a foreign force; if it is large, it is destroyed by an internal vice.

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

Montesquieu
It has eternally been observed that any man who has power is led to abuse it.

Montesquieu
The state of slavery is in its own nature bad. It is neither useful to the master nor to the slave; not to the slave, because he can do nothing through a motive of virtue; nor to the master, because by having an unlimited authority over his slaves he insensibly accustoms himself to the want of all moral virtues, and thence becomes fierce, hasty, severe, choleric, voluptuous, and cruel. … where it is of the utmost importance that human nature should not be debased or dispirited, there ought to be no slavery.

Montesquieu
The principle of democracy is corrupted not only when the spirit of equality is lost but also when the spirit of extreme equality is taken up and each one wants to be the equal of those chosen to command.

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
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