Quotes About Montesquieu

Laws, in their most general signification, are the necessary relations derived from the nature of things.

The reasons on which Montesquieu grounds his maxim are a further demonstration of his meaning. "When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person or body," says he, "there can be no liberty, because apprehensions may arise lest the same monarch or senate should enact tyrannical laws to execute them in a tyrannical manner.

Thus the cerebral footings were laid. Voltaire preferred intellectual liberty and enlightened despotism. Montesquieu wanted limited monarchy and a separation of political powers. Rousseau dreamed of an ideal republican commonwealth.

Both Madison and Thomas Jefferson were influenced by the eighteenth-century French Enlightenment philosopher Montesquieu, who defined a "republic" as a self-regulating political society whose mainspring was civic virtue.

A fondness for reading changes the inevitable dull hours of our life into exquisite hours of delight.

Power can be restrained only by counterbalancing power, Montesquieu reasoned. No man, and no political body or office, ought to possess unchecked power. For the sake of personal liberty and free community, power ought to be divided and hedged. Might this slow the actions of the state? Well, be it so, Montesquieu thought: freedom is better than haste.

Acabaré la carta amb una cita que em va encantar quan la vaig llegir per primer cop, fa molts anys. És de Montesquieu, que va tenir una vida tan afortunada, o una filosofia de vida tan magnífica, com per poder dir: «

Acabaré la carta amb una cita que em va encantar quan la vaig llegir per primer cop, fa molts anys. És de Montesquieu, que va tenir una vida tan afortunada, o una filosofia de vida tan magnífica, com per poder dir: «Je n'ai jamais eu de chagrin qu'une heure de lecture n'ait dissipé» (No he tingut mai cap pena que una hora de lectura no hagi dissipat). Quina sort, la de Montesquieu!

Ronnie never stopped talking, even though he never had anything to say except what he had just read in the Reader's Digest, which he studied the way that Jefferson did Montesquieu.

As Montesquieu wrote, "If triangles had a god they would give him three sides.") For

The application of reason revealed that reports of miracles were dubious, that the authors of holy books were all too human, that natural events unfolded with no regard to human welfare, and that different cultures believed in mutually incompatible deities, none of them less likely than the others to be products of the imagination. (As Montesquieu wrote, "If triangles had a god they would give him three sides.")

Como escribió Montesquieu: «Si los triángulos tuvieran un dios, le darían tres lados».)

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

Montesquieu had the style of a genius; Buffon, the genius of style.

I can assure you that no kingdom has ever had as many civil wars as the kingdom of Christ.

We ought to be very cautious and circumspect in the prosecution of magic and heresy. The attempt to put down these two crimes may be extremely perilous to liberty.

However, it was best known to the delegates as stated by the French thinker Montesquieu. He pointed out that When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person, or the same body of magistry, there can be no liberty; because apprehension may arise lest the same monarch or senate should enact tyrannical laws, to execute them in a tyrannical manner.

Sometimes a man who deserves to be looked upon because he is a fool is despised only because he is a lawyer.

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

When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person, or in the same body of magistrates, there can be no liberty; because apprehensions may arise, lest the same monarch or senate should enact tyrannical laws, to execute them in a tyrannical manner.

Jefferson was notably ambivalent about the French philosopher. "In the science of government Montesquieu's spirit of laws is generally recommended. It contains indeed a great number of political truths; but almost an equal number of political heresies: so that the reader must be constantly on his guard.

Jefferson did not detail his objections, but he likely was irked by Montesquieu's conclusion that a major cause of Rome's decline was Epicurean thought.

May the new era be an era of liberty and respect for everyone--including writers! Only through liberty and respect for culture can Europe be saved from the cruel days of which Montesquieu spoke in the Esprit des lois: Thus, in the days of fables, after the floods and deluges, there came forth from the soil armed men who exterminated each other. Boook XXXII, Chapter XXIII.

There is no crueller tyranny," said Montesquieu, "than the one exercised in the shadow of the law, and with the colours of justice.