Montesquieu Quotes

In Parliament we debate on and we decide the laws that are going to govern the country.

The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant.

Here, also, has been evolved the form of government consistent with the largest possible civil liberty.

Now one of two things is true: Either a republic is a desirable form of government, or else it is not.

The problem to solve is, whether a single or a double government would be most advantageous; and, in considering that point, I am met by this difficulty - that I cannot see that the present form of government is a double government at all.

One of the damnable unhappy conditions of life is sometimes Government has to make people be civil.

Why may not a Republic of Letters be realized in America as well as a Republican Government?

All free governments are party governments.

the main question seems to be how a commonwealth comes to be an empire of laws and not of men

A republic is little better than a government of devils

Under our free republican form of government the character and stability of the government depended upon the character of the citizen, the country could not continue safely incorporating into its body politic the ignorant, criminal, dangerous and hostile elements that are now being emptied upon those shores.

It is a general principle that all governments must be understood to contain within themselves the materials for their own preservation …

A government must govern, must prescribe and enforce laws within its sphere or cease to be a government. Moreover, the individual must be independent and free within his own sphere or cease to be an individual. The fundamental question ... is now, and always will be through what adjustments, by what actions, these principles may be applied.

If we carefully consider what our constitution is, we will conclude that it is, in fact, a limited monarchy.

Israel is not an anarchy.

How could you say the best form of government is a republic if you think the universe is a monarchy?

It is clear that in a monarchy, where he who commands the exceution of the laws generally thinks himself above them, there is lessneed of virtue than in a popular government, where the person entrusted with the execution of the laws is sensible of his being subject to their direction.

A republican government should be based on free and equal education among the people

A government of laws without men is as visionary as a government of men without laws.

The country has always been governed by a coalition but today it is governed by a so-called Grand Coalition which is a more polite word for all and sundry.

A form of government that is not the result of a long sequence of shared experiences, efforts, and endeavors can never take root.

A nation can be one or the other, a democracy or an imperialist, but it can't be both. If it sticks to imperialism, it will, like the old Roman Republic, on which so much of our system was modeled, like the old Roman Republic, it will lose its democracy to a domestic dictatorship.

REPUBLIC, n. A nation in which, the thing governing and the thing governed being the same, there is only a permitted authority to enforce an optional obedience.

Even respectable characters speak of a monarchical form of government without horror.

The founding fathers, in their wisdom, devised a method by which our republic can take one hundred of its most prominent numbskulls and keep them out of the private sector where they might do actual harm.