Quotes By Charles De Secondat

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

They who assert that a blind fatality produced the various effects we behold in this world talk very absurdly; for can anything be more unreasonable than to pretend that a blind fatality could be productive of intelligent beings?

Republics end through luxury; monarchies through poverty.

As soon as man enters into a state of society he loses the sense of his weakness; equality ceases, and then commences the state of war.

Power ought to serve as a check to power.

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

Happy the people whose annals are tiresome.

Thus the creation, which seems an arbitrary act, supposes laws as invariable as those of the fatality of the Atheists. It would be absurd to say that the Creator might govern the world without those rules, since without them it could not subsist.

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

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

The state of slavery is in its own nature bad.

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

In bodies moved, the motion is received, increased, diminished, or lost, according to the relations of the quantity of matter and velocity; each diversity is uniformity, each change is constancy.

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.

Each particular society begins to feel its strength, whence arises a state of war between different nations.

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

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.

There are three species of government: republican, monarchical, and despotic.

There is no greater tyranny than that which is perpetrated under the shield of the law and in the name of justice.

Although born in a prosperous realm, we did not believe that its boundaries should limit our knowledge, and that the lore of the East should alone enlighten us.

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

When the body of the people is possessed of the supreme power, it is called a democracy.

Weak minds exaggerate too much the wrong done to the Africans.

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

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

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.

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

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

Men, who are rogues individually, are in the mass very honorable people.

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.