Montesquieu

“You have to study a great deal to know a little.”

“Man, as a physical being, is like other bodies governed by invariable laws.”

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

“There is only one thing that can form a bond between men, and that is gratitude... we cannot give someone else greater power over us than we have ourselves.”

“The deterioration of a government begins almost always by the decay of its principles.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Republics end through luxury; monarchies through poverty.”

“I have read descriptions of Paradise that would make any sensible person stop wanting to go there.”

“The state of slavery is in its own nature bad.”

“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.”

“It is always the adventurers who do great things, not the sovereigns of great empires.”

“A man should be mourned at his birth, not at his death.”

“Luxury ruins republics; poverty, monarchies.”

“People here argue about religion interminably, but it appears that they are competing at the same time to see who can be the least devout.”

“To love to read is to exchange hours of ennui for hours of delight.”

“It is not the young people that degenerate; they are not spoiled till those of mature age are already sunk into corruption.”

“In the infancy of societies, the chiefs of state shape its institutions; later the institutions shape the chiefs of state.”

“There is no greater tyranny than that which is perpetrated under the shield of the law and in the name of justice.”

“The sublimity of administration consists in knowing the proper degree of power that should be exerted on different occasions.”