Baron de Montesquieu Quotes

The culminating point of administration is to know well how much power, great or small, we ought to use in all circumstances.

When we seek after wit, we discover only foolishness.

Friendship is an arrangement by which we undertake to exchange small favors for big ones.

When one wants to change manners and customs, one should not do so by changing the laws.

Sometimes a man who deserves to be looked upon because he is a fool is despised only because he is a lawyer.

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

With truths of a certain kind, it is not enough to make them appear convincing: one must also make them felt. Of such kind are moral truths.

If I knew something that would serve my country but would harm mankind, I would never reveal it; for I am a citizen of humanity first and by necessity, and a citizen of France second, and only by accident

The spirit of moderation should also be the spirit of the lawgiver.

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

There is no crueler tyranny than that which is perpetuated under the shield of law and in the name of justice.

An injustice committed against anyone is a threat to everyone.

We must have constantly present in our minds the difference between independence and liberty. Liberty is a right of doing whatever the laws permit, and if a citizen could do what they forbid he would no longer be possessed of liberty.

The love of study is in us the only lasting passion. All the others quit us in proportion as this miserable machine which holds them approaches its ruins.

What unhappy beings men are! They constantly waver between false hopes and silly fears, and instead of relying on reason they create monsters to frighten themselves with, and phantoms which lead them astray.

The false notion of miracles comes of our vanity, which makes us believe we are important enough for the Supreme Being to upset nature on our behalf.

If we only wanted to be happy, it would be easy; but we want to be happier than other people, and that is almost always difficult, since we think them happier than they are.

An author is a fool who, not content with boring those he lives with, insists on boring future generations.

The pagan religion, which prohibited only some of the grosser crimes, and which stopped the hand but meddled not with the heart, might have crimes that were inexplicable.

If the triangles made a god, they would give him three sides.

A man who writes well writes not as others write, but as he himself writes; it is often in speaking badly that he speaks well.

When a government is arrived to that degree of corruption as to be incapable of reforming itself, it would not lose much by being new moulded.

It is always the adventurous who accomplish great things.

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

Man is a social animal formed to please in society.