Montesquieu Quotes

• Jefferson, Madison and many others taught that complex laws and codes were sure signs of oppression. They agreed with Montesquieu, Lock and Hume and that laws must be simple....and indeed that the entire legal code must be simple enough that every citizen knows the entire law. If a person doesn't know the law....he shouldn't be held liable for breaking it or freedom is greatly reduced.

  Oliver DeMille

  Simple, Law, Locks

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• Many a person who could not comprehend Rousseau, and would be puzzled by Montesquieu, could understand Paine as an open book. He wrote with a clarity, a sharpness of outline and exactness of speech that even a schoolboy should be able to grasp.

  Thomas A. Edison

  Book, Would Be, Speech

  "The Philosophy of Paine" by Thomas A. Edison, June 7, 1925.

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• The lively phraseology of Montesquieu was the result of long meditation. His words, as light as wings, bear on them grave reflections.

  Joseph Joubert

  Reflection, Light, Wings

  Joseph Joubert (1896). “Pensées of Joubert”

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• [Montesquieu] lifted the veil from the venerable errors which enslaved opinion, and pointed the way to those luminous truths of which he had but a glimpse himself.

  James Madison

  Errors, Glimpse, Veils

  James Madison (1867). “1829-1836”, p.474

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

  Friedrich Melchior, Baron von Grimm

  Style, Genius, Buffon

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• [John] Adams identified himself with the political theories of [James] Harrington, [John] Locke, and [Charles-Louis] Montesquieu, whose ideas of constitutionalism, he believed, were applicable to all peoples everywhere; they were his contribution to what he called "the divine science of politics."

  Gordon S. Wood

  Ideas, Political, Divine

  Source: www.theimaginativeconservative.org

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• A father of the church said that property was theft, many centuries before Proudhon was born. Bourdaloue reaffirmed it. Montesquieu was the inventor of national workshops and of the theory that the state owed every man a living. Nay, was not the church herself the first organized democracy?

  James Russell Lowell

  Father, Men, Church

  James Russell Lowell (1889). “Books and Libraries: Democracy, and Other Papers”

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• Montesquieu well knew, and justly admired, the happy constitution of this country [Great Britain], where fixed and known laws equally restrain monarchy from tyranny and liberty from licentiousness.

  Lord Chesterfield

  Country, Law, Liberty

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• The late Président de Montesquieu told me that he knew how to be blind--he had been so for such a long time--but I swear that I do not know how to be deaf: I cannot get used to it, and I am as humiliated and distressed by it today as I was during the first week. No philosophy in the world can palliate deafness.

  Lord Chesterfield

  Philosophy, Long, World

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• After Montesquieu, the next great addition to Sociology (which is the term I may be allowed to invent to designate Social Physics) was made by Condorcet, proceeding on the views suggested by his illustrious friend Turgot.

  Auguste Comte

  Views, May, Next

  Auguste Comte (1858). “The Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte”, p.444

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• There is no error so monstrous that it fails to find defenders among the ablest men. Imagine a congress of eminent celebrities, such as More, Bacon, Grotius, Pascal, Cromwell, Bossuet, Montesquieu, Jefferson, Napoleon, Pitt, etc. The result would be an Encyclopedia of Error.

  Lord Acton

  Men, Errors, Etc

  "Letters of Lord Acton to Mary Gladstone". Book by John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, 1913.

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• We may like well to know what is Plato’s and what is Montesquieu’s or Goethe’s part, and what thought was always dear to the writer himself; but the worth of the sentences consists in their radiancy and equal aptitude to all intelligence. They fit all our facts like a charm. We respect ourselves the more that we know them.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Plato, May, Aptitude

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.2614, Delphi Classics

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