Charles de Secondat Philosopher Quotations

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.

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.

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

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

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.

Power ought to serve as a check to power.

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

Liberty is the right of doing whatever the laws permit.

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.

God is related to the universe, as Creator and Preserver; the laws by which He created all things are those by which He preserves 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.

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.

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

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?

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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