Montesquieu (The Source Of Principles In The American Constitution) On Religion

Montesquieu

Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montesquieu

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Lettres Persanes (1721) [Persian Letters]

Zeal for the advancement of religion is different from a due attachment to it; and that in order to love it and fulfil its behests, it is not necessary to hate and persecute those who are opposed to it.

• Not to be loved is a misfortune, but it is an insult to be loved no longer.
  • No. 3

• I can assure you that no kingdom has ever had as many civil wars as the kingdom of Christ.
  • No. 29

• Do you think that God will punish them for not practicing a religion which he did not reveal to them?
  • No. 35

• A man should be mourned at his birth, not at his death.
  • No. 40

People here argue about religioninterminably, but it appears that they are competing at the same time to see who can be the least devout.

• People here argue about religion interminably, but it appears that they are competing at the same time to see who can be the least devout.
  • No. 46

• Christians are beginning to lose the spirit of intolerance which animated them: experience has shown the error of the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, and of the persecution of those Christians in France whose belief differed a little from that of the king. They have realized that zeal for the advancement of religion is different from a due attachment to it; and that in order to love it and fulfill its behests, it is not necessary to hate and persecute those who are opposed to it.
  • No. 60

• And yet there is nothing so badly imagined: nature seems to have provided, that the follies of men should be transient, but they by writing books render them permanent. A fool ought to content himself with having wearied those who lived with him: but he is for tormenting future generations; he is desirous that his folly should triumph over oblivion, which he ought to have enjoyed as well as his grave; he is desirous that posterity should be informed that he lived, and that it should be known for ever that he was a fool.
  • Commonly paraphrased as "An author is a fool who, not content with having bored those who have lived with him, insists on boring future generations".
  • No. 66

• "Of all kind of authors there are none I despise more than compilers, who search every where for shreds of other men's works, which they join to their own, like so many pieces of green turf in a garden: they are not at all superior to compositors in a printing house, who range the types, which, collected together, make a book, towards which they contribute nothing but the labours of the hand. I would have original writers respected, and it seems to me a kind of profanation to take those pieces from the sanctuary in which they reside, and to expose them to a contempt they do not deserve. When a man hath nothing new to say, why does not he hold his tongue? What business have we with this double employment?"
  • No. 66

• I acknowledge that history is full of religious wars: but we must distinguish; it is not the multiplicity of religions which has produced wars; it is the intolerant spirit animating that which believed itself in the ascendant.
  • No. 86

• There are only two cases in which war is just: first, in order to resist the aggression of an enemy, and second, in order to help an ally who has been attacked.
  • No. 95

• There is only one thing that can form a bond between men, and that is gratitude.
  • No. 104

• I have read descriptions of Paradise that would make any sensible person stop wanting to go there.