PhilosophyQuotes for March 16, 2001:

"Fear, I have observed, would induce men to shun one another; but the marks of this fear being reciprocal, would soon engage them to associate."

"There is no word that admits of more various significations, and has made more varied impressions on the human mind, than that of liberty."

"We must have continually present to our minds the difference between independence and liberty. Liberty is a 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."

-Baron de Montesquieu (1689-1755), The Spirit of the Laws (1752)

Montesquieu's The Spirit of the Laws is available online at Amazon.com.