Montesquieu Quotes

I can create institutions, but I can't rewrite the chips in people's heads.

Just because the laws were changed doesn't mean that the attitudes have changed.

When cultural change succeeds, it succeeds because it's so embedded in what we do that we don't have to think about.

I think culture precedes politics, and I think the attempts to try and legislate people's behavior... isn't going to be productive until the culture decides what they want to achieve.

As manners make laws, so manners likewise repeal them.

If you really want to change a culture... empower women.

As important as it is to change the light bulbs, its more important to change the laws

There are always those who say legislation can't solve the problem. There is a half-truth involved here. It is true that legislation cannot solve the whole problem. It can solve some of the problem. It may be true that morality can't be legislated, but behavior can be regulated.

Unnecessary customs live a brutally short life in America.

New customs, Though they be never so ridiculous (Nay, let em be unmanly), yet are followed.

In our society, marriage is not simply a governmental institution; it is a religious institution as well, today's decision might change the former, but it cannot change the latter.

Ceremony forbids us to express by words things that are lawful and natural, and we obey it; reason forbids us to do things unlawful and ill, and nobody obeys it.

I spend as little time with lawmakers as possible. Many are great. And more than you expect want real change. But they're not going to do anything till we, the outsiders, force them to adopt it.

We make our customs lightly; once made, like our sins, they grip us in bands of steel; we become the creatures of our creation.

You can't move so fast that you try to change the mores faster than people can accept it.

I think that we need to change the culture, not blame the people that are playing the only game that exists.

Conventions are like coins, an easy way of dealing with the commerce of relations.

It takes far more courage to violate a custom than a law.

The universality of a custom is pledge of its worth.

The customs and practices of life in society sweep us along.

When politics is too slow, change has to come from culture.

There is nothing sacred about convention; there is nothing sacred about primitive passions or whims; but the fact that a convention exists indicates that a way of living has been devised capable of maintaining itself.

We yearn for frictionless, technological solutions. But people talking to people is still the way norms and standards change.

There will not be a magic day when we wake up and it's now okay to express ourselves publicly. We make that day by doing things publicly until it's simply the way things are.