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.
— Montesquieu
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.
In the infancy of societies, the chiefs of state shape its institutions; later the institutions shape the chiefs of state.
I have always observed that to succeed in the world one should seem a fool, but be wise.
No kingdom has shed more blood than the kingdom of Christ.
Peace is a natural effect of trade.
Luxury ruins republics; poverty, monarchies.
Law in general is human reason, inasmuch as it governs all the inhabitants of the earth: the political and civil laws of each nation ought to be only the particular cases in which human reason is applied.
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.
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.
Although born in a prosperous realm, we did not believe that its boundaries should limit our knowledge, and that the lore of the East should alone enlighten us.
You have to study a great deal to know a little.
The success of most things depends upon knowing how long it will take to succeed.
Weak minds exaggerate too much the wrong done to the Africans.
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.
The deterioration of a government begins almost always by the decay of its principles.
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.
If triangles had a god, they would give him three sides.
False happiness renders men stern and proud, and that happiness is never communicated. True happiness renders them kind and sensible, and that happiness is always shared.
The tyranny of a prince in an oligarchy is not so dangerous to the public welfare as the apathy of a citizen in a democracy.
To become truly great, one has to stand with people, not above them.
An empire founded by war has to maintain itself by war.
The less men think, the more they talk.
When the body of the people is possessed of the supreme power, it is called a democracy.
The object of war is victory; that of victory is conquest; and that of conquest preservation.
Each particular society begins to feel its strength, whence arises a state of war between different nations.
Thus the creation, which seems an arbitrary act, supposes laws as invariable as those of the fatality of the Atheists. It would be absurd to say that the Creator might govern the world without those rules, since without them it could not subsist.
There is no greater tyranny than that which is perpetrated under the shield of the law and in the name of justice.
If I knew of something that could serve my nation but would ruin another, I would not propose it to my prince, for I am first a man and only then a Frenchman... because I am necessarily a man, and only accidentally am I French.
Raillery is a mode of speaking in favor of one's wit at the expense of one's better nature.
The state of slavery is in its own nature bad.
Liberty is the right of doing whatever the laws permit.
Republics end through luxury; monarchies through poverty.
There are only two cases in which war is just: first, in order to resist the aggression of an enemy, and second, in order to help an ally who has been attacked.
There should be weeping at a man's birth, not at his death.
It is not the young people that degenerate; they are not spoiled till those of mature age are already sunk into corruption.
Talent is a gift which God has given us secretly, and which we reveal without perceiving it.
If the triangles made a god, they would give him three sides.
What orators lack in depth they make up for in length.
Laws undertake to punish only overt acts.
There are three species of government: republican, monarchical, and despotic.
The law of nations is naturally founded on this principle, that different nations ought in time of peace to do one another all the good they can, and in time of war as little injury as possible, without prejudicing their real interests.
Man, as a physical being, is like other bodies governed by invariable laws.
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?
Happy the people whose annals are tiresome.
I have always observed that to succeed in the world one should appear like a fool but be wise.
Men, who are rogues individually, are in the mass very honorable people.
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.
Society is the union of men and not the men themselves.
I have read descriptions of Paradise that would make any sensible person stop wanting to go there.
