It is necessary from the very nature of things that power should be a check to power.
The deterioration of every government begins with the decay of the principles on which it was founded.
To become truly great, one has to stand with people, not above them.
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.
There is no crueler tyranny than that which is perpetuated under the shield of law and in the name of justice.
In the state of nature... all men are born equal, but they cannot continue in this equality. Society makes them lose it, and they recover it only by the protection of the law.
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.
Every man who has power is impelled to abuse it.
The less men think, the more they talk.
An injustice committed against anyone is a threat to everyone.
Law should be like death, which spares no one.
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.
To succeed in the world we must look foolish but be wise.
I should like to abolish funerals; the time to mourn a person is at his birth, not his death.
If we only wanted to be happy, it would be easy; but we want to be happier than other people, and that is almost always difficult, since we think them happier than they are.
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.
You have to study a great deal to know a little.
It is always the adventurous who accomplish great things.
Religious wars are not caused by the fact that there is more than one religion, but by the spirit of intolerance... the spread of which can only be regarded as the total eclipse of human reason.
Liberty is the right to do what the law permits.
If you run after wit, you will succeed in catching folly.
In republican governments, men are all equal; equal they are also in despotic governments: in the former, because they are everything; in the latter, because they are nothing.
...when the laws have ceased to be executed, as this can only come from the corruption of the republic, the state is already lost.
When a government lasts a long while, it deteriorates by insensible degrees. Republics end through luxury, monarchies through poverty.
Passion makes us feel, but never see clearly.
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