Montesquieu Quotes

Montesquieu

Profession : Philosopher

Birth : January 18, 1689

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

Montesquieu

Liberty is the right to do what the law permits.

Montesquieu

Each particular society begins to feel its strength, whence arises a state of war between different nations.

Montesquieu

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

Montesquieu

Law in general is human reason, inasmuch as it governs all the inhabitants of the earth: the political and civil laws of each nation ought to be only the particular cases in which human reason is applied.

Montesquieu

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.

Montesquieu

Author: A fool who, not content with having bored those who have lived with him, insists on tormenting generations to come.

Montesquieu

People here argue about religion interminably, but it appears that they are competing at the same time to see who can be the least devout.

Montesquieu

Life was given to me as a favor, so I may abandon it when it is one no longer.

Montesquieu

The state of slavery is in its own nature bad.

Montesquieu

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.

Montesquieu

Man, as a physical being, is like other bodies governed by invariable laws.

Montesquieu

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

Montesquieu

There should be weeping at a man's birth, not at his death.

Montesquieu