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.
Baron de MontesquieuThere is no nation so powerful, as the one that obeys its laws not from principals of fear or reason, but from passion.
Baron de MontesquieuDemocracy is corrupted not only when the spirit of equality is corrupted, but likewise when they fall into a spirit of extreme equality.
Baron de MontesquieuNo tyranny is more cruel than the one practised in the shadow of the laws and under color of justice - when, so to speak, one proceeds to drown the unfortunate on the very plank by which they had saved themselves. And since a tyrant never lacks instruments for his tyranny, Tiberius always found judges ready to condemn as many people as he might suspect.
Baron de Montesquieu