Man, as a physical being, is like other bodies governed by invariable laws.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that human existence is subject to the same physical laws as the rest of the universe.
Montesquieu highlights the idea that humans, despite our complexities and consciousness, are ultimately physical beings operating under the same natural laws that govern all matter. This perspective challenges the notion of human exceptionalism by reminding us of our connection to the larger physical world.
In practice
This quote can serve as a discussion starter in a philosophy class about the nature of humanity.
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.
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.
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.
For what can war, but endless war, still breed?
In the transmission of human culture, people always attempt to replicate, to pass on to the next generation the skills and values of the parents, but the attempt always fails because cultural transmission is geared to learning, not DNA.
In the Constitution of the United States, Negroes are referred to as fellows although the word 'slave' is carefully avoided before the thirteenth amendment.
Give a thing a name and it will somehow come to be.
If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.
Tradition! We scarcely know the word anymore. We are afraid to be either proud of our ancestors or ashamed of them. We scorn nobility in name and in fact. We cling to a bourgeois mediocrity which would make it appear we are all Americans, made in the image and likeness of George Washington.
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