Political Works

"The compass opened, if I may so express myself, the universe."

"Useless laws weaken the necessary laws."

"Money is a sign which represents the value of all merchandise."

"I shall ever repeat it, that mankind are governed not by extremes, but by principles of moderation."

"Great commanders write their actions with simplicity; because they receive more glory from facts than from words."

"It is a general rule that taxes may be heavier in proportion to the liberty of the subject, and that there is a necessity for reducing them in proportion to the increase of slavery. This has always been and always will be the case. It is a rule derived from nature that never varies."

"Slowness is frequently the cause of much greater slowness."

"Men who have absolutely nothing, such as beggars, have many children."

"The first Greeks were all pirates."

"The laws do not take upon them to punish any other than overt acts."

"Great punishments, and consequently great changes, cannot take place without investing some citizens with an exorbitant power."

"Politics are a smooth file, which cuts gradually, and attains its end by slow progression."

"The public revenues are a portion that each subject gives of his property, in order to secure or enjoy the remainder."

"It is an important maxim, that we ought to be very circumspect in the prosecution of magic and heresy. The accusation of these two crimes may be vastly injurious to liberty."

"Slavery, properly so called, is the establishment of a right which gives to one man such a power over another as renders him absolute master of his life and fortune. The state of slavery is in its own nature bad. It is neither useful to the master nor to the slave; not to the slave, because he can do nothing through a motive of virtue; nor to the master, because by having an unlimited authority over his slaves he insensibly accustoms himself to the want of all moral virtues, and thence becomes fierce, hasty, severe, choleric, voluptuous, and cruel. … where it is of the utmost importance that human nature should not be debased or dispirited, there ought to be no slavery. In democracies, where they are all upon equality; and in aristocracies, where the laws ought to use their utmost endeavors to procure as great an equality as the nature of the government will permit, slavery is contrary to the spirit of the constitution: it only contributes to give a power and luxury to the citizens which they ought not to have."

"This punishment of death is the remedy, as it were, of a sick society."

"The effect of wealth in a country is to inspire every heart with ambition: that of poverty is to give birth to despair. The former is excited by labour, the latter is soothed by indolence."

"There are countries where a man is worth nothing; there are others where he is worth less than nothing."

"La société est l'union des hommes, et non pas les hommes..."

"There is no word that has admitted of more various significations, and has made more different impressions on human minds, than that of Liberty. Some have taken it for a facility of deposing a person on whom they had conferred a tyrannical authority; others for the power of choosing a person whom they are obliged to obey; others for the right of bearing arms, and of being thereby enabled to use violence, others in fine for the privilege of being governed by a native of their own country or by their own laws. Some have annexed this name to one form of government, in exclusion of others: Those who had a republican taste, applied it to this government; those who liked a monarchical state, gave it to monarchies. Thus they all have applied the name of liberty to the government most conformable to their own customs and inclinations: and as in a republic people have not so constant and so present a view of the instruments of the evils they complain of, and likewise as the laws seem there to speak more, and the executors of the laws less, it is generally attributed to republics, and denied to monarchies. In fine as in democracies the people seem to do very near whatever they please, liberty has been placed in this sort of government, and the power of the people has been confounded with their liberty."

"Liberty is the right of doing whatever the laws permit, and if a citizen could do what they forbid he would be no longer possessed of liberty, because all his fellow-citizens would have the same power."

"It is difficult for the united states to be all of equal power and extent."

"Democratic and aristocratic states are not in their own nature free. Political liberty is to be found only in moderate governments; and even in these it is not always found. It is there only when there is no abuse of power. 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. Is it not strange, though true, to say that virtue itself has need of limits?"

"Laws, in their most general signification, are the necessary relations arising from the nature of things. In this sense all beings have their laws: the Deity His laws, the material world its laws, the intelligences superior to man their laws, the beasts their laws, man his laws. They who assert that a blind fatality produced the various effects we behold in this world talk very absurdly; for can anything be more unreasonable than to pretend that a blind fatality could be productive of intelligent beings?"

"If a republic be small, it is destroyed by a foreign force; if it be large, it is ruined by an internal imperfection."

"The political liberty of the subject is a tranquillity of mind, arising from the opinion each person has of his safety. In order to have this liberty, it is requisite the government be so constituted as one man need not be afraid of another."

"Commerce is sometimes destroyed by conquerors, sometimes cramped by monarchs; it traverses the earth, flies from the places where it is oppressed, and stays where it has liberty to breath: it reigns at present where nothing was formerly to be seen but deserts, seas, and rocks; and where it once reigned now there are only deserts."

"De petits esprits exagèrent trop l'injustice que l'on fait aux Africains."

"The history of commerce is that of the communication of the people."

"In every government there are three sorts of power: the legislative; the executive in respect to things dependent on the law of nations; and the executive in regard to matters that depend on the civil law. By virtue of the first, the prince or magistrate enacts temporary or perpetual laws, and amends or abrogates those that have been already enacted. By the second, he makes peace or war, sends or receives embassies, establishes the public security, and provides against invasions. By the third, he punishes criminals, or determines the disputes that arise between individuals. The latter we shall call the judiciary power, and the other, simply, the executive power of the state. 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. Again, there is no liberty if the judiciary power be not separated from the legislative and executive. Were it joined with the legislative, the life and liberty of the subject would be exposed to arbitrary control; for the judge would be then the legislator. Were it joined to the executive power, the judge might behave with violence and oppression. There would be an end of every thing, were the same man, or the same body, whether of the nobles or of the people, to exercise those three powers, that of enacting laws, that of executing the public resolutions, and of trying the causes of individuals. The executive power ought to be in the hands of a monarch, because this branch of government, having need of dispatch, is better administered by one than by many: on the other hand, whatever depends on the legislative power, is oftentimes better regulated by many than by a single person. But, if there were no monarch, and the executive power should be committed to a certain number of persons, selected from the legislative body, there would be an end of liberty, by reason the two powers would be united; as the same persons would sometimes possess, and would be always able to possess, a share in both."

"I would as soon say that religion gives its professors a right to enslave those who dissent from it, in order to render its propagation more easy. This was the notion that encouraged the ravagers of America in their iniquity. Under the influence of this idea they founded their right of enslaving so many nations; for these robbers, who would absolutely be both robbers and Christians, were superlatively devout. Louis XIII was extremely uneasy at a law by which all the negroes of his colonies were to be made slaves; but it being strongly urged to him as the readiest means for their conversion, he acquiesced without further scruple."

"Commerce is a cure for the most destructive prejudices; for it is almost a general rule that wherever we find agreeable manners, there commerce flourishes; and that wherever there is commerce, there we meet with agreeable manners."

"Peace is the natural effect of trade. Two nations who traffic with each other become reciprocally dependent; for if one has an interest in buying, the other has an interest in selling: and thus their union is founded on their mutual necessities."

"Fain would I glide down a gentle river, but I am carried away by a torrent."

"All lazy nations are grave; for those who do not labour regard themselves as the sovereigns of those who do."

"Vanity is as advantageous to a government as pride is dangerous."

"A revolution formed by liberty becomes a confirmation of liberty. A free nation may have a deliverer: a nation enslaved can have only another oppressor. For whoever is able to dethrone an absolute prince has a power sufficient to become absolute himself."

"It is a true maxim that one nation should never exclude another from trading with it, except for very great reasons."

"Liberty itself has appeared intolerable to those nations who have not been accustomed to enjoy it. Thus pure air is sometimes disagreeable to such as have lived in a fenny country."

"There are two sorts of tyranny: one real, which arises from oppression; the other is seated in opinion, and is sure to be felt whenever those who govern establish things shocking to the existing ideas of a nation."

"I shall be obliged to wander to the right and to the left, that I may investigate and discover the truth."

"The culture of lands requires the use of money."

"The prejudices of superstition are superior to all others, and have the strongest influence on the human mind."

"It is the business of the legislature to follow the spirit of the nation, when it is not contrary to the principles of government; for we do nothing so well as when we act with freedom, and follow the bent of our natural genius."

"The avarice of nations makes them quarrel for the movables of the whole universe."

"Mankind by their industry, and by the influence of good laws, have rendered the earth more proper for their abode."

"Not in the name of a necessary protection of the white race did the European break into China, but for the benefit of the Jewish-mercantile greed for profit. He thus dishonored himself, destroying a whole civilization, provoking justified indignation. China fights for its myth, for its race, and its ideals, as does the renewal-movement in Germany against the mercantile race that rules all stock markets and the actions of most governments."

"His [Paul] false humility was coupled with a desire for world dominion. He displayed an overheated “religious” longing as with all Orientals. He desired to march at the head of the rebels. Such was the Pauline falsification of the great figure of Christ. John has interpreted Jesus in an ingenious way. He recognized that here one was dealing with an anti Jewish spirit hostile to the old testament. But this has been covered over by a Jewish tradition which was linked with the spiritual waste products of the Hellenic world shaped anew in the Roman church. Europe has tried to renew, in vain, this Oriental church. Europe's reverence of its "Christianity" has condemned all attempts to failure. But the "Christian" churches are a monstrous, [partly] deliberate and [partly] unconscious falsification of the simple happy message of the kingdom of heaven within us. They are a falsification of the child of god, and of service for the good, and of passionate defence against evil."

"If the distinction provided by Jesus' words: Give unto god, what is god's, and unto Caesar what is Caesar's! is carried through, then other necessary intrusions by the national state into the domain of church creeds can be completely avoided."

"Now we may certainly also say that the love of Jesus Christ has been the love of one who is conscious of his aristocracy of soul and of his strong personality. Jesus sacrificed himself as a master, not as a servant. … And also Martin Luther knew only too well, what he said, when shortly before his death he wrote "These three words, free – Christian – German, are to the pope and the Roman court nothing but mere poison, death, devil and hell. They can neither suffer, see nor hear them. Nothing else will come of it, that is certain." (Against the papacy donated by the devil in Rome, 1645)"