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Danh ngôn của Montesquieu (Sứ mệnh: 6)

In most things success depends on knowing how long it takes to succeed.
I have never known any distress that an hour's reading did not relieve.
An author is a fool who, not content with boring those he lives with, insists on boring future generations.
We should weep for men at their birth, not at their death.
There is no nation so powerful, as the one that obeys its laws not from principals of fear or reason, but from passion.
Friendship is an arrangement by which we undertake to exchange small favors for big ones.
Men should be bewailed at their birth, and not at their death.
The sublimity of administration consists in knowing the proper degree of power that should be exerted on different occasions.
Do you think that God will punish them for not practicing a religion which he did not reveal to them?
A man should be mourned at his birth, not at his death.
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.
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.
The deterioration of a government begins almost always by the decay of its principles.
Society is the union of men and not the men themselves.
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.
Men, who are rogues individually, are in the mass very honorable people.
You have to study a great deal to know a little.
Power ought to serve as a check to power.
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.
The object of war is victory; that of victory is conquest; and that of conquest preservation.
There are three species of government: republican, monarchical, and despotic.
When the body of the people is possessed of the supreme power, it is called a democracy.
The less men think, the more they talk.
Peace is a natural effect of trade.
An empire founded by war has to maintain itself by war.
If the triangles made a god, they would give him three sides.
To become truly great, one has to stand with people, not above them.
It is not the young people that degenerate; they are not spoiled till those of mature age are already sunk into corruption.
False happiness renders men stern and proud, and that happiness is never communicated. True happiness renders them kind and sensible, and that happiness is always shared.
We must have constantly present in our minds the difference between independence and liberty. Liberty is a right of doing whatever the laws permit, and if a citizen could do what they forbid he would no longer be possessed of liberty.
If triangles had a god, they would give him three sides.