Top 200 Baron de Montesquieu Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “Those who have few affairs to attend to are great speakers. The less men think, the more they talk.”

— Baron de Montesquieu

52. “The Ottoman Empire whose sick body was not supported by a mild and regular diet, but by a powerful treatment, which continually exhausted it.”

— Baron de Montesquieu

53. “But constant experience shows us that every man invested with power is apt to abuse it, and to carry his authority as far as it will go.”

— Baron de Montesquieu

54. “Nature repairs everything.”

— Baron de Montesquieu

55. “The coffee is prepared in such a way that it makes those who drink it witty: at least there is not a single soul who, on quitting the house, does not believe himself four times wittier that when he entered it.”

— Baron de Montesquieu

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

— Baron de Montesquieu

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

— Baron de Montesquieu

58. “Liberty is the right to do what the law permits.”

— Baron de Montesquieu

59. “As virtue is necessary in a republic, and honor in a monarchy, fear is what is required in a despotism. As for virtue, it is not at all necessary, and honor would be dangerous there.”

— Baron de Montesquieu

60. “The wickedness of mankind makes it necessary for the law to suppose them better than they really are.”

— Baron de Montesquieu

61. “Luxury ruins republics; poverty, monarchies.”

— Baron de Montesquieu

62. “Study has been for me the sovereign remedy against all the disappointments of life. I have never known any trouble that an hour’s reading would not dissipate.”

— Baron de Montesquieu

63. “A good writer does not write as people write, but as he writes.”

— Baron de Montesquieu

64. “Never create by law what can be accomplished by morality.”

— Baron de Montesquieu

65. “The success of most things depends upon knowing how long it will take to succeed.”

— Baron de Montesquieu

66. “Europe is a state with several provinces.”

— Baron de Montesquieu

67. “The majority of men are more capable of great actions than of good ones.”

— Baron de Montesquieu

68. “Honor is unknown in despotic states.”

— Baron de Montesquieu

69. “The severity of the laws prevents their execution.”

— Baron de Montesquieu

70. “We ought to be very cautious and circumspect in the prosecution of magic and heresy. The attempt to put down these two crimes may be extremely perilous to liberty.”

— Baron de Montesquieu

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

— Baron de Montesquieu

72. “It is necessary from the very nature of things that power should be a check to power.”

— Baron de Montesquieu

73. “When the savages of Louisiana wish to have fruit, they cut the tree at the bottom and gather the fruit. That is exactly a despotic government.”

— Baron de Montesquieu

74. “There is a very good saying that if triangles invented a god, they would make him three-sided.”

— Baron de Montesquieu

75. “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.”

— Baron de Montesquieu

76. “Mediocrity is a hand-rail.”

— Baron de Montesquieu

77. “The history of commerce is that of the communication of the people.”

— Baron de Montesquieu

78. “There are countries where a man is worth nothing; there are others where he is worth less than nothing.”

— Baron de Montesquieu

79. “Better it is to say that the government most comfortable to nature is that which best agrees with the humor and disposition of the people in whose favor it is established.”

— Baron de Montesquieu

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

— Baron de Montesquieu

81. “The desire for glory is no different from that instinct for preservation that is common to all creatures. It is as if we enhance our being if we can gain a place in the memory of others; it is a new life that we acquire, which becomes as precious to us as the one we received from Heaven.”

— Baron de Montesquieu

82. “When the savages of Louisiana are desirous of fruit, they cut the tree to the root and gather the fruit. This is an emblem of despotic government.”

— Baron de Montesquieu

83. “I like peasants-they are not sophisticated enough to reason speciously.”

— Baron de Montesquieu

84. “My dear Usbek, when women feel, as they lose their attractiveness, that their end is coming in advance, they would like to go backwards to youth again. How could they possibly not attempt to deceive other people? – they make every effort to deceive themselves, and to escape from the most distressing thought we can have.”

— Baron de Montesquieu

85. “It is rare to find learned men who are clean, do not stink and have a sense of humour.”

— Baron de Montesquieu

86. “A fondness for reading changes the inevitable dull hours of our life into exquisite hours of delight.”

— Baron de Montesquieu

87. “If one only wished to be happy, this could be easily accomplished; but we wish to be happier than other people, and this is always difficult, for we believe others to be happier than they are.”

— Baron de Montesquieu

88. “There are bad examples which are worse than crimes; and more states have perished from the violation of morality than from the violation of law.”

— Baron de Montesquieu

89. “We are so blind that we know neither when to mourn, nor when to rejoice; our mirth and our sadness are nearly always false.”

— Baron de Montesquieu

90. “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.”

— Baron de Montesquieu

91. “Do you think that God will punish them for not practicing a religion which he did not reveal to them?”

— Baron de Montesquieu

92. “The English are busy; they don’t have time to be polite.”

— Baron de Montesquieu

93. “To lend money without interest, is certainly an action laudable and extremely good; but it is obvious, that it is only a counsel of religion, and not a civil law.”

— Baron de Montesquieu

94. “Wherever I find envy I take a pleasure in provoking it: I always praise before an envious man those who make him grow pale.”

— Baron de Montesquieu

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

— Baron de Montesquieu

96. “Men, who are rogues individually, are in the mass very honorable people.”

— Baron de Montesquieu

97. “There is something in animals beside the power of motion. They are not machines; they feel.”

— Baron de Montesquieu

98. “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.”

— Baron de Montesquieu

99. “It is clear that in a monarchy, where he who commands the exceution of the laws generally thinks himself above them, there is lessneed of virtue than in a popular government, where the person entrusted with the execution of the laws is sensible of his being subject to their direction.”

— Baron de Montesquieu

100. “Nature is just to all mankind, and repays them for their industry. She renders them industrious by annexing rewards in proportion to their labor.”

— Baron de Montesquieu