102 Quotes by Montesquieu

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 state of slavery is in its own nature bad.

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

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.

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.

Countries are well cultivated, not as they are fertile, but as they are free.

Weak minds exaggerate too much the wrong done to the Africans.

There is no one, says another, whom fortune does not visit once in his life; but when she does not find him ready to receive her, she walks in at the door, and flies out at the window.

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