- Lived:
- 1689–1755 · Château de La Brède, near Bordeaux, and Paris
- Tradition:
- French Enlightenment; political philosophy and the birth of comparative politics
- The Big Idea:
- Laws are not commands dropped from heaven but relations — shaped by climate, commerce, custom, and character — and political liberty survives only where power is arranged to check power.
- In their words:
- "So that power may not be abused, it is necessary that, by the very disposition of things, power should be a check to power."
- If you remember one thing:
- Every constitution on earth that splits government into legislative, executive, and judicial branches is quarrying a book written over twenty years by a half-blind wine-growing baron who sold his judge's chair to finish it.