102 Quotes by Montesquieu

A nation may lose its liberties in a day and not miss them in a century.

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.

We should weep for men at their birth, not at their death.

In most things success depends on knowing how long it takes to succeed.

Liberty is the right to do what the law permits.

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?

Friendship is an arrangement by which we undertake to exchange small favors for big ones.

When the body of the people is possessed of the supreme power, it is called a democracy.

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