Quotes by Baron de Montesquieu

When a government is arrived to that degree of corruption as to be incapable of reforming itself, it would not lose much by being new moulded.

Liberty is the right to do what the law permits.

In the birth of societies it is the chiefs of states who give it its special character; and afterward it is this special character that forms the chiefs of state.

That anyone who possesses power has a tendency to abuse it is an eternal truth. They tend to go as far as the barriers will allow.

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.

If you run after wit, you will succeed in catching folly.

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.

The pagan religion, which prohibited only some of the grosser crimes, and which stopped the hand but meddled not with the heart, might have crimes that were inexplicable.

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

C est le tyran qui m outrage, et non pas celui qui exerce la tyrannie.