Tags

, , , , ,

Go to the Index of 120 Philosophers Squared

Montesquieu  (18 January 1689 – 10 February 1755) was a French theoretical political reformer who articulated the need for separation of church and state. To prevent abuse, it is necessary from the very nature of things that power should be a check to power.

Montesquieu

Montesquieu promoted separation of state powers.

Sourced from WikiQuote, GoodReads, BrainyQuotes

1. You have to study a great deal to know a little.

2. I shall be obliged to wander to the right and to the left, that I may investigate and discover the truth.

3. 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.

4. Not to be loved is a misfortune, but it is an insult to be loved no longer.

5. Love for the successor is nothing but hatred for the predecessor.

6. Oh, how empty is praise when it reflects back to its origin!

7. [The Pope] will make the king believe that three are only one, that the bread he eats is not bread…and a thousand other things of the same kind.

8. The prejudices of superstition are superior to all others, and have the strongest influence on the human mind.

9. I have read descriptions of Paradise that would make any sensible person stop wanting to go there.

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

11. I would as soon say that religion gives its professors a right to enslave those who dissent from it, in order to render its propagation more easy.

12. This was the notion that encouraged the ravagers of America in their iniquity. Under the influence of this idea they founded their right of enslaving so many nations; for these robbers, who would absolutely be both robbers and Christians, were superlatively devout.

13. Do you think that God will punish them for not practicing a religion which he did not reveal to them?

14. In France there are three kinds of professions: the church, the sword, and the long robe. Each hath a sovereign contempt for the other two. For example, a man who ought to be despised only for being a fool is often so because he is a lawyer.

15. 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.

16. Christians are beginning to lose the spirit of intolerance which animated them: experience has shown the error of the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, and of the persecution of those Christians in France whose belief differed a little from that of the king. They have realized that zeal for the advancement of religion is different from a due attachment to it; and that in order to love it and fulfill its behests, it is not necessary to hate and persecute those who are opposed to it.

17. I acknowledge that history is full of religious wars: but we must distinguish; it is not the multiplicity of religions which has produced wars; it is the intolerant spirit animating that which believed itself in the ascendant.

18. Christianity stamped its character on jurisprudence; for empire has ever a connection with the priesthood.

19. An author is a fool who, not content with having bored those who have lived with him, insists on boring future generations.

20. Of all kind of authors there are none I despise more than compilers, who search every where for shreds of other men’s works, which they join to their own, like so many pieces of green turf in a garden: they are not at all superior to compositors in a printing house, who range the types, which, collected together, make a book, towards which they contribute nothing but the labors of the hand. I would have original writers respected, and it seems to me a kind of profanation to take those pieces from the sanctuary in which they reside, and to expose them to a contempt they do not deserve. When a man hath nothing new to say, why does not he hold his tongue? What business have we with this double employment?

21. 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.

22. There is only one thing that can form a bond between men, and that is gratitude…we cannot give someone else greater power over us than we have ourselves.

23. Better it is to say that the government most comfortable to nature is that which best agrees with the humor and disposition of the people in whose favor it is established.

24. The public business must be carried on with a certain motion, neither too quick nor too slow.

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

26. Politics are a smooth file, which cuts gradually, and attains its end by slow progression.

27. Slowness is frequently the cause of much greater slowness.

28. Honor sets all the parts of the body politic in motion, and by its very action connects them; thus each individual advances the public good, while he only thinks of promoting his own interest.

29. It is not the young people that degenerate; they are not spoiled till those of maturer age are already sunk into corruption.

30. At our coming into the world, we contract an immense debt to our country, which we can never discharge.

31. The wickedness of mankind makes it necessary for the law to suppose them better than they really are.

32. Republics end through luxury; monarchies through poverty.

33. The deterioration of a government begins almost always by the decay of its principles.

34. It is difficult for the united states to be all of equal power and extent.

35. Society is the of men and not the men themselves.

36. There is no word that has admitted of more various significations, and has made more different impressions on human minds, than that of Liberty. Some have taken it for a facility of deposing a person on whom they had conferred a tyrannical authority; others for the power of choosing a person whom they are obliged to obey; others for the right of bearing arms, and of being thereby enabled to use violence, others in fine for the privilege of being governed by a native of their own country or by their own laws.
Some have annexed this name to one form of government, in exclusion of others: Those who had a republican taste, applied it to this government; those who liked a monarchical state, gave it to monarchies. Thus they all have applied the name of liberty to the government most conformable to their own customs and inclinations: and as in a republic people have not so constant and so present a view of the instruments of the evils they complain of, and likewise as the laws seem there to speak more, and the executors of the laws less, it is generally attributed to republics, and denied to monarchies. In fine as in democracies the people seem to do very near whatever they please, liberty has been placed in this sort of government, and the power of the people has been confounded with their liberty.

37. Liberty is the right of doing whatever the laws permit.

38, Democratic and aristocratic states are not in their own nature free. Political liberty is to be found only in moderate governments; and even in these it is not always found. It is there only when there is no abuse of power. But constant experience shows us that every man invested with power is apt to abuse it, and to carry his authority as far as it will go. Is it not strange, though true, to say that virtue itself has need of limits?

39. To prevent this abuse, it is necessary from the very nature of things that power should be a check to power. A government may be so constituted, as no man shall be compelled to do things to which the law does not oblige him, nor forced to abstain from things which the law permits.

40 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.

41. This punishment of death is the remedy, as it were, of a sick society.

42. The laws do not take upon them to punish any other than overt acts.

43. The public revenues are a portion that each subject gives of his property, in order to secure or enjoy the remainder.

44. The state of slavery is in its own nature bad…

45. Slavery, properly so called, is the establishment of a right which gives to one man such a power over another as renders him absolute master of his and fortune. The state of slavery is in its own nature bad. It is neither useful to the master nor to the slave; not to the slave, because he can do nothing through a motive of virtue; nor to the master, because by having an unlimited authority over his slaves he insensibly accustoms himself to the want of all moral virtues, and thence becomes fierce, hasty, severe, choleric, voluptuous, and cruel. … where it is of the utmost importance that human nature should not be debased or dispirited, there ought to be no slavery. In democracies, where they are all upon equality; and in aristocracies, where the laws ought to use their utmost endeavors to procure as great an equality as the nature of the government will permit, slavery is contrary to the spirit of the constitution: it only contributes to give a power and luxury to the citizens which they ought not to have.

46. The culture of lands requires the use of money.

47. Liberty itself has appeared intolerable to those nations who have not been accustomed to enjoy it.

48. Vanity is as advantageous to a government as pride is dangerous.

49. [Britain is] a nation that may be justly called a republic, disguised under the form of a monarchy.

50. Fain would I glide down a gentle river, but I am carried away by a torrent.

51. The avarice of nations makes them quarrel for the movables of the whole universe.

52. The history of commerce is that of the communication of the people.

53. The first Greeks were all pirates.

54. Great commanders write their actions with simplicity; because they receive more glory from facts than from words.

55. Money is a sign which represents the value of all merchandise.

56. I shall ever repeat it, that mankind are governed not by extremes, but by principles of moderation.

57. There are countries where a man is worth nothing; there are others where he is worth less than nothing.

58. Useless laws weaken the necessary laws.

59. Very good laws may be ill timed.

60. Raillery is a mode of speaking in favor of one’s wit at the expense of one’s better nature.

61. I have always observed that to succeed in the world one should appear like a fool but be wise.’

62. If I knew of something that could serve my nation but would ruin another, I would not propose it to my prince, for I am first a man and only then a Frenchman…because I am necessarily a man, and only accidentally am I French.

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

COMMENTS on Montesquieu’s quotes

So often I have said that great ideas are all around us and can be easily written down, and revolutionize the world. Such a one was Montesquieu’s notion: To prevent abuse, it is necessary from the very nature of things that power should be a check to power. Of course that idea was latent for millennia, but only in the form of the practice of it as raw competition between men lusting after power. There was no acknowledgment of the need for balance of power, and no codification in the laws as being above the lusts of men, no way to eliminate abuse except by abuse itself. That is what makes it such an important idea, and why the founding father’s of the United States valued it so much, and wove those ideas into the fabric of government.

Religions are codified belief, and they become rigid because the people become convinced they are absolutely right. I acknowledge that history is full of religious wars: but we must distinguish; it is not the multiplicity of religions which has produced wars; it is the intolerant spirit animating that which believed itself in the ascendant. Monotheism is potentially the most intolerant of all religions because the patrons of a unique belief constrict their belief to an absolute unity, and thus everything that isn’t exactly right, is wrong, and must be utterly destroyed. Thus it has been claimed that,

Monotheism is the most evil idea ever created by man.