Montesquieu Quotes

Un grand seigneur est un homme qui voit le roi, qui parle aux ministres, qui a des ancêtres, des dettes et des pensions.

La réputation et la vertu y sont regardées comme imaginaires, si elles ne sont accompagnées de la faveur du prince, avec laquelle elles naissent et meurent de même.

Nature repairs everything.

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.

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

La plupart des législateurs ont été des hommes bornés, que le hasard a mis à la tête des autres, et qui n'ont presque consulté que leurs préjugés et leurs fantaisies.

إن القانون على العموم هو الموجب البشري ما سيطر على أمم الأرض طُرًّا، ولا ينبغي للقوانين السياسية والمدنية في كل أمة أن تكون غير الأحوال الخاصة التي يطبق عليه الموجب البشري … ويجب أن تكون تلك القوانين خاصة بطبيعة البلد، خاصة بالإقليم البارد أو الحار أو المعتدل، وبطبيعة الأرض وموقعها واتساعها، وبجنس حياة الأمم أو الزراع أو الصائدين أو الرعاة، ويجب أن تناسب درجة الحرية التي يمكن أن يبيحها النظام، ودين الأهلين وعواطفهم وغناهم وعددهم وتجارتهم وطبائعهم ومناهجهم … وهذا ما أحاول صنعه في هذا الكتاب، فأبحث في جميع هذه الصلات، وهي التي يتألف من مجموعها ما يسمى روح الشرائع.

There is no greater tyranny than that which is perpetrated under the shield of the law and in the name of justice. (Cambridge University Press (September 29, 1989)

Translation: Horace and Aristotle told us of the virtues of their fathers, and the vices of their own time, and authors down through the centuries have told us the same. If they were right, men would now be bears.

"A person of my acquaintance said: . . .

"Study has always been for me the sovereign remedy against life's unpleasantness, since I have never experienced any sorrow that an hour's reading did not eliminate.

...when the laws have ceased to be executed, as this can only come from the corruption of the republic, the state is already lost.

Il n'y a pas de nation aussi puissante que celle qui obéit à ses lois non pas par des principes de peur ou de raison, mais par passion.

And yet there is nothing so badly imagined: nature seems to have provided, that the follies of men should be transient, but they by writing books render them permanent. A fool ought to content himself with having wearied those who lived with him: but he is for tormenting future generations; he is desirous that his folly should triumph over oblivion, which he ought to have enjoyed as well as his grave; he is desirous that posterity should be informed that he lived, and that it should be known for ever that he was a fool.

An author is a fool who, not content with boring those he lives with, insists on boring future generations.

CHAP. I.: Of the Spirit of a Legislator. I SAY it, and methinks I have undertaken this work with no other view than to prove it; the spirit of a legislator ought to be that of moderation; political, like moral evil, lying always between two extremes. Let us produce an example. The set forms of justice are necessary to liberty; but the number of them might be so great as to be contrary to the end of the very laws that established them; processes would have no end; property would be uncertain; the goods of one of the parties would be adjudged to the other without examining, or they would both be ruined by examining too much. The citizens would lose their liberty and security; the accusers would no longer have any means to convict, nor the accused to justify themselves.