193 Quotes by Baron de Montesquieu

Peace is a natural effect of trade.

At our coming into the world we contract an immense debt to our country, which we can never discharge.

Never create by law what can be accomplished by morality.

Democracy is corrupted not only when the spirit of equality is corrupted, but likewise when they fall into a spirit of extreme equality.

In constitutional states, liberty is compensation for heavy taxes; in dictatorships, the subsititue is light taxes.

No kingdom has shed more blood than the kingdom of Christ.

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.

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.

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.