Montesquieu Quotes

Republics end through luxury; monarchies through poverty.

Republics come to an end by luxurious habits; monarchies by poverty.

Monarchy is a species of government fit only for a people too much corrupted by luxury, avarice, and a passion for pleasure, to have any love for their country, and whose vices the fear of punishment alone is able to restrain.

Nothing is more certain than that a general profligacy and corruption of manners make a people ripe for destruction. A good form of government may hold the rotten materials together for some time, but beyond a certain pitch, even the best constitution will be ineffectual, and slavery must ensue.

Wisdom degenerates in governments as governments increase in age.

Republics are brought to their ends by luxury; monarchies by poverty.

All I know is just what I read in the Congressional Record. They have had some awful funny articles in there lately. As our government deteriorates, our humor increases.

Luxury, or a refinement on the pleasures and conveniences of life, has long been supposed the source of every corruption in government, and the immediate cause of faction, sedition, civil wars, and the total loss of liberty.

How oppressive the best institutions become in the course of a few generations …. shall a system of government or religion … endure for ever?

Sedition is bred in the lap of luxury and its chosen emissaries are the beggared spendthrift and the impoverished libertine.

Unlike 30 years ago, people now admire the wealth of the West and lament the poverty of China; they stare awestruck at the power of the Western armies and scorn the cowardice of the Imperial troops; they enjoy the fairness and ease of the Customs and detest the fault-finding of China’s own tax collectors; they praise the orderly governance of the Western-Administered cities, and resent the harassment of our officials, big and small.

This (the U.S. Constitution) is likely to be administered for a course of years and then end in despotism... when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic government, being incapable of any other

The state grew fat, but the people grew lean.

In short, corruption destroys the 'deal' - the bargain - between the citizen and the state; and it harms the poorest most.

A banana republic we are not.

A miserable politics awaits us when the irreligious rot flows downstream.

A party is perpetually corrupted by personality.

Should look forward to a time, and that not a distant one, when corruption in this, as in the country from which we derive our origin, will have seized the heads of government, and be spread by them through the body of the people; when they will purchase the voices of the people, and make them pay the price.

We are Born like this Into this Into these carefully mad wars Into the sight of broken factory windows of emptiness Into bars where people no longer speak to each other Into fist fights that end as shootings and knifings Born into this Into hospitals which are so expensive that it’s cheaper to die Into lawyers who charge so much it’s cheaper to plead guilty Into a country where the jails are full and the madhouses closed Into a place where the masses elevate fools into rich heroes

A nonviolent system of government is clearly an impossibility so long as the wide gulf between the rich and the hungry millions persists.

We are in a degenerate state of self-government. In fact, even to use the words self-government, is not only an exaggeration, it's a lie. It's a big lie!

In government, the scum rises to the top.

Societies exist under three forms sufficiently distinguishable. 1. Without government, as among our Indians. 2. Under governments wherein the will of every one has a just influence, as is the case in England in a slight degree, and in our states, in a great one. 3. Under governments of force: as is the case in all other monarchies and in most of the other republics. To have an idea of the curse of existence under these last, they must be seen. It is a government of wolves over sheep.

Sin and death and suffering and war and poverty are not natural—they are the devastating results of our rebellion against God. We long for a return to Paradise—a perfect world, without the corruption of sin, where God walks with us and talks with us in the cool of the day.

All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities.