politics Quotes

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

The sublimity of administration consists in knowing the proper degree of power that should be exerted on different occasions.

The tyranny of a prince in an oligarchy is not so dangerous to the public welfare as the apathy of a citizen in a democracy.

Law in general is human reason, inasmuch as it governs all the inhabitants of the earth: the political and civil laws of each nation ought to be only the particular cases in which human reason is applied.

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.

A nation may lose its liberties in a day and not miss them in a century.

In the infancy of societies, the chiefs of state shape its institutions; later the institutions shape the chiefs of state.

The object of war is victory; that of victory is conquest; and that of conquest preservation.

Countries are well cultivated, not as they are fertile, but as they are free.

The severity of the laws prevents their execution.