The law of nations is naturally founded on this principle, that different nations ought in time of peace to do one another all the good they can, and in time of war as little injury as possible, without prejudicing their real interests.
Interpretation
Nations should strive to do good for one another during peace and minimize harm during conflict, while safeguarding their own interests.
This quote by Montesquieu highlights the moral obligation of nations to promote goodwill and cooperation in times of peace. It also emphasizes the need for nations to act judiciously during conflicts, ensuring that while they look after their own interests, they should aim to inflict the least damage possible on others, thereby balancing self-interest with ethical considerations in international relations.
In practice
In a speech about international diplomacy, a leader might reference this quote to emphasize the importance of cooperation.
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.
Author: A fool who, not content with having bored those who have lived with him, insists on tormenting generations to come.
Man, as a physical being, is like other bodies governed by invariable laws.
In bodies moved, the motion is received, increased, diminished, or lost, according to the relations of the quantity of matter and velocity; each diversity is uniformity, each change is constancy.
Raillery is a mode of speaking in favor of one's wit at the expense of one's better nature.
Liberty is the right of doing whatever the laws permit.
All sentiment is right; because sentiment has a reference to nothing beyond itself, and is always real, wherever a man is conscious of it. But all determinations of the understanding are not right; because they have a reference to something beyond themselves, to wit, real matter of fact; and are not always conformable to that standard.
Most of the world's religions serve only to strengthen attachments to false concepts such as self and other, life and death, heaven and earth, and so on. Those who become entangled in these false ideas are prevented from perceiving the Integral Oneness.
Pride is at the bottom of a great many errors and corruptions, and even of many evil practices, which have a great show and appearance of humility.
It is true we have won all our wars, but we have paid for them. We don't want victories anymore.
The louder our world today is, the deeper God seems to remain in silence. Silence is the language of eternity; noise passes.
To believe in luck, if it were not a solecism so to use the word believe, is skepticism.
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