“ The fertility of a people depends sometimes on the most trifling circumstances in the world; so that often nothing more is necessary to increase its numbers than to give a new direction to its imagination. ”
Montesquieu, Persian Letters (1721). copy citation
| Author | Montesquieu |
|---|---|
| Source | Persian Letters |
| Topic | imagination world |
| Date | 1721 |
| Language | English |
| Reference | |
| Note | Translated by John Davidson |
| Weblink | https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Persian_Letters |
Context
“There is nothing more absurd than to cause countless numbers of men to perish in extracting from the bowels of the earth gold and silver, metals in themselves absolutely useless, and which constitute wealth only because they have been chosen as the symbols of it.
Paris, the last of the moon of Chahban, 1718.
Letter 120 Usbek to the Same
The fertility of a people depends sometimes on the most trifling circumstances in the world; so that often nothing more is necessary to increase its numbers than to give a new direction to its imagination.
The Jews, always being exterminated, and always increasing again, have repaired their continual losses and destruction by the single hope, shared by all their families, that from one of them shall spring a powerful king who will be the master of the world.”
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