A fool who, not content with having bored those who have lived with him, insists on tormenting the generations to come.
A nation may lose its liberties in a day and not miss them in a century.
A really intelligent man feels what other men only know.
An empire founded by war has to maintain itself by war.
An injustice committed against anyone is a threat to everyone.
Coffee renders many foolish people temporarily capable of wise actions.
Democracy has two excesses to avoid: the spirit of inequality, which leads to an aristocracy, or to the government of a single individual; and the spirit of extreme equality, which conducts it to despotism, as the despotism of a single individual finishes by conquest.
Every man who has power is impelled to abuse it.
For a country, everything will be lost when the jobs of an economist and a banker become highly respected professions.
Friendship is a contract in which we render small services in expectation of big ones.
If one only wished to be happy, this could be easily accomplished; but we wish to be happier than other people, and this is always difficult, for we believe others to be happier than they are.
If triangles invented a god, they would make him three-sided.
In most things success depends on knowing how long it takes to succeed.
It is necessary from the very nature of things that power should be a check to power.
It is rare to find learned men who are clean, do not stink and have a sense of humor.
Law should be like death, which spares no one.
Laws undertake to punish only overt acts.
Liberty itself has appeared intolerable to those nations who have not been accustomed to enjoy it.
Men, who are rogues individually, are in the mass very honorable people.
Not to be loved is a misfortune, but it is an insult to be loved no longer.
Passion makes us feel, but never see clearly.
Power ought to serve as a check to power.
Republics end through luxury, monarchies through poverty.
Solemnity is the shield of idiots.
The alms given to a naked man in the street do not fulfil the obligations of the state, which owes to every citizen a certain subsistence, a proper nourishment, convenient clothing, and a kind of life not incompatible with health.
The deterioration of every government begins with the decay of the principles on which it was founded.
The less luxury there is in a republic, the more it is perfect.
The less men think, the more they talk.
The mood and temper of the public in regard to the treatment of crime and criminals is one of the most unfailing tests of the civilisation of any country.
The reason the Romans built their great paved highways was because they had such inconvenient footwear.
The time to mourn a person is at his birth, not his death.
The wickedness of mankind makes it necessary for the law to suppose them better than they really are.
There are countries where a man is worth nothing; there are others where he is worth less than nothing.
There are only two cases in which war is just: first, in order to resist the aggression of an enemy, and second, in order to help an ally who has been attacked.
There are three species of government: republican, monarchical, and despotic.
There is no crueler tyranny than that which is perpetuated under the shield of law and in the name of justice.
There is no nation so powerful, as the one that obeys its laws not from principals of fear or reason, but from passion.
This punishment of death is the remedy, as it were, of a sick society.
To succeed in the world we must look foolish but be wise.
Useless laws weaken necessary laws.
Virtue has needs of limits.
Virtue is necessary to a republic.
We cannot give someone else greater power over us than we have ourselves.
We receive three educations, one from our parents, one from our school-masters, and one from the world. The third contradicts all that the first two teach us.
When a government lasts a long while, it deteriorates by insensible degrees. Republics end through luxury, monarchies through poverty.
When one wants to change manners and customs, one should not do so by changing the 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.
Found 47 occurence(s) in 52,059 quotation(s).
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